Four best practices for B2B customer experience

Learn the top ways to optimize your customer experience to help draw in prospects and elevate critical business metrics 

Now more than ever, it’s clear that a next-level customer experience can make a world of difference in the success of your business-to-business (B2B) buyer’s journey. Your prospective buyers want to not only be seen, but heard. They want their concerns addressed and a seamless, technologically advanced buying experience offered to them from the start.  

The idea of an optimized customer experience isn’t a marketing or leadership trend, it’s based on tangible data. A recent survey found that 80% of business leaders have plans to increase their budgets for customer service in the next year and 71% of them plan to optimize their customer journey. [1]

Join us to learn how to optimize your B2B customer experience with the four best practices below: 

#1: Communicate, communicate, communicate

Whether we’re talking about prospective buyers or existing clients, communication is vital to the success of the experience of your customers.

The cadence and methodology of your team’s communication with your clients should all depend on what each unique client needs. Certain clients may want to meet with your team every month to check in, while others may only have time to meet once a quarter. Some may prefer emails and Zoom meetings, while others may favor phone calls and in-person touch points.

Regardless of how you communicate with your clients, make sure that you’re being clear and transparent throughout every conversation. 

#2: Listen and learn

Throughout your communications with prospects and clients, it’s essential that you take the time to listen to their needs and learn what they want for their business. 

Focusing on your clients’ needs and wants is one of the best ways to optimize your customer experience because it allows you to tailor it to the types of clients you want to work with. If you take the time to listen to your clients, you’ll be more successful because they’ll be content with your partnership and the quality of services that you and your team provides. 

As much as you and your team try to guess what your clients may want, you’ll never be able to optimize your customer experience unless you explicitly listen and ask for how you can better serve your clients. 

#3: Be proactive

As you’re optimizing your customer experience, it’s essential that you design it in a way that allows your team to interact in a proactive way with your clients. This can be most successfully achieved by heeding the prior practice of listening and learning.

While you meet with your clients and they detail what they need from your products or services, don’t wait for them to give you all the information you need to succeed. Ask questions and follow-up as often as you need to ensure a peaceful relationship and top-notch end product for both your team and theirs. 

For example, as a marketing agency, our clients will often ask for us to help them with specific projects that are outside of the scope of our ongoing agency support services. Instead of waiting for them to provide us with what we need, we set up a meeting or send an email with specific questions and ask for what we’ll need to successfully complete the project and provide them with a high-quality end product.  

#4: Back it up with data

Another essential practice for your customer experience is collecting data from your clients and utilizing it to optimize their journey to partnership and relationship with your business. If you aren’t used to collecting data from your clients, you may feel hesitant at first, but 59% of consumers actually want the companies that they interact with to collect data about them and utilize it to personalize their experiences. [1]

There are many different ways you can collect data from your clients, but one of the simplest ways to get started is to send out satisfaction surveys. They don’t have to be lengthy or overly complex. Your customer satisfaction survey could be as simple as asking how happy they are with the service you provide on a sliding scale, asking a couple open ended questions like if there’s anything you could improve or any new products/services they’d like you to offer, and any additional comments they’d like to provide. 

Looking for insights into your customer experience? 

At Different Perspective, we’re committed to being trusted advisors that provide actionable business and marketing advice to our valued clients.  

With nearly two decades of experience, we endeavor to take care of every client’s business as if it is our own. Our clients range from unique local businesses to established national companies within a variety of industries from healthcare and technology to real estate and aviation. 

Fill out the contact form here or give us a call at 407.226.9774 to connect with our team today.

Source:
1: Zendesk | CX Trends 2023