3 B2B Customer Experience Fundamentals for Manufacturers

Most companies in the manufacturing industry deal with parts and products, sidelining the need for enhancing customer experience for the B2B buyer. The technical nature of B2B market as a whole, and manufacturing industry in particular, results in a lesser focus on customer expectation, customer loyalty, increasing conversion rates, customer journey map, and boosting marketing ROI.

But, to stay at the top of the competition in today's customer-centric market, manufacturing companies must deliver a top-class B2B customer experience. For this, a B2B brand must think about implementing CX strategies more than just hitting sales quotas or conducting adequate quality checks on every product.

Pain Points B2B Manufacturers Deal With

The B2B customer expects simple buying processes and personalized customer experiences. Companies are coming across the following issues while delivering market-relevant B2B CX -

• Today, B2B manufacturing companies lack the customer journey mapping capabilities and omnichannel tools needed to get single-view of the customer profile and determine the attribution channel for the sale. This results in their lack of a comprehensive understanding of the customer's behavior.
• B2B firms today are rapidly growing and expanding through acquisitions of multiple brands. As a result, they have multisystem chaos - fragmented processes, various systems to track, and legacy systems that decrease productivity.
• They are faced with a new kind of sales cycle, and changing demands for new business models and strategies to figure out how to transition and leverage their investments in various technologies to boost production or productivity.
• As a result of the Amazon effect, B2B manufacturing companies also face demand for implementing better customer experience strategies and promoting digital marketplaces. This is a result of the changing shopping patterns and customer expectations in the growing market space.

Why Should You Improve Customer Experience?

 

Fig. Top reasons why companies must improve CX

Boost Value of Each Sale
Customers who had good experiences previously are willing to spend 140% more than those who have had bad experiences, a study by Harvard Business Review suggested. This means that providing enhanced and personalized customer experiences can increase the value of each sales the company makes.

Improve Customer Retention An excellent B2B customer experience can be a huge differentiating factor in today’s market. Superior customer service increases customer satisfaction and results in higher customer retention for your business. Improving customer services enables you to provide smoother customer experiences to customers in turn, resulting in satisfied customers to be associated with your brand for a lifetime.

Save Cost of Customer Acquisition Did you know that acquiring a new customer can cost companies over seven times than maintaining an existing one? This means that investing in enhancing customer experiences for your current customer base is much more economical than starting from scratch.

3 Ways B2B Manufacturers Can Use to Enhance CX

B2B manufacturers must find ways to enhance customer experience at lowered costs with higher ROI in this technologically-driven market. For this, they can turn to the following tips -

Improve Customer Service

Fig. How AI is Improving Customer Service with Better CX

Research suggests that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers. Manufacturers today must invest in improving customer service to stay ahead of the competition. While closely competing with the products and services you’re offering, better customer support is a great differentiator to expand your customer base.

Companies can add chatbots and self-service portals to their websites and mobile applications for faster problem-solving without the need for human intervention. With this, companies can also look into effectively train their customer support representatives and customer-facing staff to be more prompt with solving the problems.

Personalize Customer Experience
Engaging your customer through the customer life cycle is the best way to increase customer retention and loyalty. From the first stage where customers become aware of your brand to the final stage where the customer becomes an advocate, engagement is key to boosting ROI. Use different ways to personalize the digital experience for your customer – customized ads and content across multiple channels, personalization based on device, and even different geolocations. Optimizing the customer journey and gathering insights can also help you provide relevant content to stay relatable.

Enhance Omnichannel Customer Experience
90% of business managers believe analytics can improve sales, research suggests. This data can be drawn by studying customer behavior across various channels that the customer might use to interact with your company. As CX today suggests that 9 out of 10 consumers expect an omnichannel experience with seamless communication methods, building the right omnichannel strategies is important for companies to enhance CX. Customers today expect to have a non-siloed, smooth online and offline experience; meeting the changing customer expectations is vital to remain in business.

The Bottom Line

The world is changing, and the manufacturing industry has to change in tandem. In today’s customer-centric market, customers are looking for value at every step of the customer journey. Companies that actively seek to deliver that value have a significant competitive advantage. As a manufacturer, breaking down silos between departments and allowing better communication along the customer journey can help CX enhance and expand customer bases.