There’s strong evidence to suggest that leaders in B2B businesses are paying more attention than ever to the customer experiences they provide across their digital channels.
This has been driven by four trends that we explored in more detail in a previous post:
- An acceleration in the use of B2B digital channels during Covid
- Changing customer demographics and expectations
- Recognition of how digital can drive growth and reduce costs
- The increasing threat of disruption and the rise of Amazon Business
For us this is a welcome departure from the established narrative, which constantly reinforces how far B2B customer experiences lag behind their B2C counterparts - suggesting somehow that digital leaders across manufacturing, wholesale and distribution just don't get it and need to get their acts together.
Do digital leaders in B2B just not get it?
But the reality is very different. There's a level of sophistication in B2B ecommerce that B2C digital teams could only dream of. It's a world where personalised ranges and prices, sophisticated cross-merchandising and self-help tools, combined with unparalleled levels of customer service are the norm.
Digital leaders in B2B do get it and have actually been quite busy.
In fact, it would be easy to argue that B2B provides a far better platform for customer experience innovation then B2C, where the route to growth still involves a constant struggle to attract ever higher levels of traffic, combined with efforts to convert these visitors to customers, then retain them, when most will forever remain frustratingly anonymous or uncontactable.
Small wonder then that an increasing number of digital leaders from B2C are making the move into B2B. The combination of complexity, sophistication and ambition, with the ability to make a real difference for identifiable customers is intoxicating enough to make a switch to this emerging and rapidly growing sector very attractive.
So, if they do get it - who's to blame?
So, if digital leaders in B2B actually do get it and have been busy delivering levels of personalisation and customer service unmatched in many B2C contexts and people from B2C are moving into the sector, why is it that so many customer experiences in B2B still don't meet customer expectations?
In our experience this is because they fail to meet the emotional - as well as the practical needs of customers, who expect experiences that are simple and enjoyable to use, need access to useful content and tools and want to feel valued, trusted and part of a community.
But the failure to understand and act on this doesn't sit with digital leaders at all, it has its roots in the organisational inertia of B2B businesses, some of which have been operating in the same way (digital channels aside) for 100 years or more. The old way of doing things has always worked.
As a consequence there has been a lack of investment in digital and it's not unusual for huge B2B ecommerce businesses to be run by very small teams, with limited development budgets at their disposal - a far cry from the levels of digital innovation and customer-centric change present in B2C today.
Today's B2B digital leaders are the agents for change
But talk to any of today's breed of digital leaders in B2B and you will discover they are painfully aware of any deficiencies in the customer experiences they are responsible for managing. They don't need any more research to remind them of this or to incentivise them to act.
In fact, far from being resistant to change - they are actually the change agents. They are the ones taking on and winning the argument within their organisations that - in order to flourish in the future - it's essential to become customer-centric and invest in digital as a route to do so.
And it's an important argument to win because, whilst we all agree it's essential to become customer-centric, it's harder to act on this in practice. Investing in understanding customers needs, then meeting them takes time and has to compete with projects with tangible short-term ROI benefits such as (for example) relocating a warehouse to reduce fulfilment costs.
Sometimes it's hard to keep the faith.
So, whilst there is evidence things are changing (we refer to our opening paragraph) and clear market trends driving the need for change - actually making it happen relies on the leadership, grit and determination of today's B2B digital leaders.
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