Some businesses make it hard to work with them. It seems at times that many B2B organizations have made it so complex and uncomfortable to work with that customers are forced to find an alternative even if their current provider offers a better product or solution.
As connected consumers, we want ease, we want a good experience, we have an expectation of those with whom we spend our money. We have seen this with 1-click ordering, same day delivery, and improved e-commerce experiences. Given that we want this as consumers, it makes sense that when we move into our professional worlds, we want to work with and buy from companies that have the same kind of focus on customer experience.
However, according to a recent article on DesitnationCRM.com, most B2B organizations are failing in providing a positive customer experience with fewer than 10% of organizations saying they do.
The article goes on to provide some tips that B2B organizations can adopt to improve the customer experience. While I agree with all of the suggestions in the article, there are a few more that I have added here.
Apply Empathy
In a blog post written by Brian Carroll he writes the following:
Neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio discovered, “We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.” Damasio made this groundbreaking discovery: when emotions are impaired, so is decision-making. What does this mean? We need to go beyond logic to understand how our customers feel.
This is particularly important if you have a complex sale where B2B buyers face daunting decisions that involve huge risks. Our customers aren’t saying, “We need solutions.” Instead, they’re saying, “We need to solve a problem” So what would happen if you focused on helping them do just that?
One of the questions I am routinely asked by new clients is, “are we the worst case you have ever seen?” What they are really saying is, “we know we have problems and can you help us. We want to improve.”
Many times the first meeting I have with a client is listening, inquiring and assuring them that all will be ok. It is applying empathy and letting them know that together we will improve.
I spoke with a CEO yesterday who told me, “We have to stop speaking about our platform and begin speaking to our customer’s issues and let them know we understand.” This is empathy in action and he is intent on moving his company in this direction.
Improve The Web Experience
I sat with a prospect a few days ago who said, “if you go to our website you have to have a PhD. to understand what we do.” She was right. The site is overly complex, hard to understand and trying to find any kind of content is extremely difficult.
The reality is that in most cases, buyers and customers consume content digitally and if organizations make it hard to find or use overly complex language, it makes it harder to do business.
One executive, I spoke with this week told me, “I am not trying to be insulting, but we look to develop content and design our product so that a high school freshman could understand it. We want it to be super easy for our customers.”
Having long web forms, gating all of your content, making a buyer go through multiple clicks and pages to access content, or making your site hard to navigate are all reasons why customers will look elsewhere.
Organizations need to think about the fact that often the first interaction a potential customer will have with your brand is your website, if it is a poor experience, they may not come back.
Focus on Your People
Ever engaged with an employee of a company who hates their job? If you have, chances are you could feel it in the interaction, in the approach they took to you as a customer and it is an all-together negative experience.
One of the places to start in improving customer experience is with your employees. Many companies want to ensure their customers have a great experience but skip over the all to important step of first developing a positive employee experience.
Employees that feel appreciated, are recognized, are given opportunities to enhance their skill set, and given an opportunity to reap the benefits of the organization’s success are employees that bring that positive vibe to your customers. This has to be a foundation for any organization if customer experience is going to be realized.
Customer experience is quickly becoming one of the top buying decision and loyalty factors for B2B customers. Organizations can no longer afford to fail at it and need to move quickly to a customer-centric point of view or be left behind.
The full post on empathy by Brian Carroll can be found here
Image courtesy of Halogen Software
