What advice would you give a customer service manager in the B2B world?
The key points to focus on when looking to provide service excellence for a B2B client are:
Deliver what was promised, and maybe a little more.
Add some emotional content to your (team‘s) service delivery.
Resolve problems effectively and learn from them.
Maintain a close customer relationship and build detailed customer insight in order to optimise your customer’s experiences.
Working with B2B clients is often complex, especially where there are multiple points of contact between you as the supplier and the client ‘s organisation. It can be challenging to manage a team of people at different levels, with diverse functions and via distinct service channels in a way that provides a consistent approach. What is essential is to have a totally organised approach to managing the customer’s experience. You will need to routinely collect accurate, timely information about how well relationships and processes are working across all the teams and individuals who interact with the customer. Analyse all the key interactions that make up your customer’s journey, remembering that they will all have both physical outcomes (for example, did the customer receive their delivery on time?) and emotional outcomes (for example, was the driver friendly and helpful?).
Let‘s face it, things will sometimes go wrong, and how you deal with problems will largely determine what your customer thinks of you. B2B customers, like all customers, want to do their business with you in a straightforward way. They don’t want problems, but most will accept that issues do occur from time to time; however, they are driven by an expectation that, if anything does go wrong, you and your organisation will put it right in a positive, proactive manner, and learn the lessons.
What will the key trends be in 2022for B2B online customer service?
In my opinion, be characterised by two key developments in B2B:
1. As economies continue their recoveries after COVID, there will be a significant shake-out of organisations that are service under-performers. The successful companies will be those that truly understand how to become customer centric. The ones that fall by the wayside will be those that want to achieve service excellence, but don’t invest sufficiently in the people, technology and processes that will actually make the desire a reality.
2. Technology-driven improvements in service for B2B clients will be a key feature this year, developing better E-service strategies, managing remote teams , recognising and rewarding staff will ultimately lead to success.
Businesses will find that it’s the projects that are customer-centric from the start that will give the bigger returns.