You’ll never go wrong erring on the side of your customer.
As a B2B business, the voice of your customer (VoC) can provide a crucial competitive advantage as the B2B space goes increasingly digital. In fact, Gartner research found that 81% of companies say they will compete primarily on customer experience in two years.
Why does VoC matter so much? The B2B digital space is more sophisticated and complex than ever, so simply offering ecommerce without taking into consideration what experiences your customers actually want won’t cut it. Figure out their pain points, embrace what they’re telling you, and deliver your digital experiences accordingly.
It’s all about the customer
Businesses often believe that reducing silos internally is the best way for companies to come together to improve the customer experience. While that’s true to an extent, the reality is that customers don’t care if your organization is siloed or how it’s structured. Instead, they want easy, seamless buying experiences that make their jobs easier. Whatever you do internally simply needs to meet their needs.
So how do you figure out what your customers want? Many third-party technologies and companies exist to help businesses implement VoC programs — from online tools that collect customer feedback surveys in real-time to companies that can establish and run focus groups or detailed ongoing research.
Another way to understand customer needs is by monitoring how they interact with your site. For example, say your customers can easily find products and add them to a cart, but then frequently abandon the process. In this case, maybe your path to purchase is too complex, or you’ve targeted people on the client side who are responsible for researching, but haven’t considered the needs of those actually making purchases.
Once you have feedback, create ad hoc advisory boards comprised of department leads who will come together to translate customer feedback. If you’ve found that customers struggle to complete basic spare parts orders, for instance, maybe your product ordering and spare parts teams need to get together to determine a solution.
The beauty of flexible commerce software
After you have identified a solution to address customer feedback, execution can be easier said than done — especially if you use an outdated, on-premises ecommerce system. Inflexible technologies make it difficult to make updates quickly, causing you to miss out on a crucial window of time to address customer feedback.
That’s where flexible, cloud-based ecommerce systems can make all the difference. With an ecommerce platform that allows for continuous, low-code updates, you can keep up with your customer needs in near real-time. Take time to reevaluate your solution and consider how a flexible system might help you gain a leg up as customer demands evolve.
And at the end of the day, when customers feel their needs are met, you’ll notice increased satisfaction, greater loyalty, and ultimately more sales.
Learn more about how Salesforce B2B Commerce can help you keep pace with customer needs today.
