When VF Group - home to brands like The North Face, Timberland, Vans and Dickies - decided to consolidate all its global ecommerce websites onto a single, consistent platform, it took the unusual step of putting customer experience insight at the heart of the platform selection process.
It was a move that would do more than simply de-risk what was a massive undertaking in its own right. The actionable insight it gathered informed a customer-centric approach that put re-platforming at the heart of a comprehensive customer experience optimisation strategy - a strategy designed to drive innovation before, during and long after platform migration.
A Customer-centric View
How did this come about? In fact, it all started with a single, simple question: "Which platform should we select?". But VF Group was determined to look beyond purely technical and operational considerations, to also view the selection process from the point of view of experience innovation:
As Manuel da Costa-Campos, Head of Consulting at Biglight put it: "User experience research shouldn't just answer one question - "Which platform should I get?". It should tell us that, but also what we want to do once we have it and what we can do in the meantime to improve the user experience and drive commercial performance."
With that in mind, there followed a detailed program of mobile and desktop User Experience Testing, Data Analysis, Benchmarking and Heuristic Reviews led by the Biglight team, in Boston and London. That work was designed to map the micro-conversions that take users from browse to purchase, assess problem areas along the way and identify opportunities for customer experience optimisation - from quick wins to longer term strategic direction:
That process delivered a wealth of data and information, but deriving actionable insight requires a further step - a collaborative solutions workshop designed with two main purposes. The first and most important was to put each issue or opportunity in a customer-centric context, and the second was to start the process of hypothesising and prioritising solutions.
Manuel explained: "Creating customer-centric problem statements is a crucial step. It encourages everyone to adopt a different mindset when thinking about areas of friction in the customer journey and how to address them. It ensures that user experience optimisation is focused on better serving unmet customer needs, and that innovation drives commercial performance."
Platform Selection and Much More
The outputs from that process of assessment and consultancy went far beyond simply helping VF Group to select the right ecommerce platform. It delivered a menu of customer experience innovation options, broken down across three areas:
That menu of customer experience initiatives was complemented by clear guidance on how to approach each opportunity - ranging from response and A/B testing to rapid prototyping, guerrilla testing, redesign projects and more.
But, crucially, it also enabled VF Group to take a CX-centric approach to platform selection - based on clear evidence that customer-centricity has a significant impact on commercial performance.
Manuel concluded: "Putting in place a customer-centric optimisation roadmap enables brands to go to platform providers with quite specific requirements - innovations, features and functionality the platform must support, both now and in the future. That enables very practical conversations with platform vendors and makes the decision about more than just managing risk - now it's about maximising opportunity too."
In our Biglight Briefing on 5th August, we explored the lessons retail brands can learn from the beauty industry and its rapidly evolving approaches to building online customer engagement - crucially not just how beauty brands tap into highly engaged online communities, but also how they close the loop to convert engagement into sales.
We were fortunate to be joined by Deborah Stead, Founder & CEO of Deborah Stead Associates, UK market lead & DTC consultant at L'Occitane Group's Duolab, Jane Cunningham, beauty journalist and content creator at Britishbeautyblogger.com, and Hanna Langley, Head of Client Services at brand performance agency, Threepipe Reply.
Each was able to draw on real world experiences to explore this topic from complementary perspectives and one thing became abundantly clear during the session: The beauty industry's shift away from traditional paid media approaches to instead harness the power of online influence and digital marketing has been more journey than step change.
There is much retailers facing a digital first reality can learn from success and missteps along the way:
If you couldn't make the session, you don't have to miss out on these insights and more. You can watch the whole session here - and we hope you find it as interesting and enjoyable as we did.
A big thank you to Deborah, Jane and Hannah for taking part and to our partners Tech Circus and Threepipe Reply for their support.
How Did the Entertainment Media Sector Adapt to Rapidly Changing Customer Behaviour to Realise Huge Subscription Growth During COVID-19 Lockdowns Worldwide - and What Can Retailers Learn from the Industry's Approach?
When COVID-19 precipitated national lockdowns worldwide, almost every sector - from retail to airlines - faced an existential threat.
However, the entertainment media sector was an exception - with millions of consumers stuck at home, media subscription sales exploded. For instance, in the week ending the 6th April 2020, subscriber growth rates were 960% higher than in the week ending 16th March.
In our fourth Biglight Briefing, we will be joined by Simone Barsky Nili, Product Director at Discovery Inc to explore the strategies entertainment media brands employed to overcome serious challenges and realise such stellar growth - and identify the lessons retainers can learn along the way.
We will explore:
When: Wednesday 7th October 2020 @ 17:00 BST
To register for this FREE remote event just click here
When Traverz developed its innovative 'Conversational Recommendation Technology', the team believed it would drive a "paradigm change in product search" by enabling a more personalised experience than traditional on/off filters.
However, launching a disruptive ecommerce technology with the promise of vastly improved performance compared with traditional approaches brings something of a challenge - how do you prove it?
That is the challenge that brought Traverz to Biglight. It needed to build an evidence-based go-to-market proposition by benchmarking the performance of Conversational Recommendation against standard filters, but without the ability to draw on live implementations as the source of quantitative data.
The Answer...? Customer Research
Given that Traverz product is essentially business to business, using consumer research to validate its proposition for online retail might seem counter intuitive. It had, after all, already built fully functioning demo sites designed to enable potential buyers to see the solution in action.
However, convincing retailers of the merits of a radically new approach to product search requires more than a demo - they want to understand the likely commercial impact which, in turn, means understanding the impact on customer behaviour - from purchase intent to loyalty.
To deliver that insight we worked with Traverz to design a customer research approach combining one to one moderated sessions and surveys across two days. Users were asked to complete task-based journeys on two of Traverz' demo sites - first with standard filters and then again with Conversational Recommendation experience in place.
The aim was to deliver credible independent verification of Traverz' claimed benefits by gathering user feedback on the experience and through benchmark polling to capture net promoter scores, experience and intent ratings on:
The Impact: A Validated Proposition
It was not our role to endorse the Traverz proposition or otherwise, but to provide the independent research expertise required to test the efficacy of its Conversational Recommendation approach - to let the findings speak for themselves.
That said, it is not a stretch to conclude that our research revealed a significant consumer preference for the Traverz experience - a powerful validation of its proposition for retailers and is now at the heart of Traverz go-to-market strategy and messaging:
"Biglight delivered an awesome piece of work, which was incredibly valuable for Traverz. It validated our proposition in the most powerful way possible, by clearly demonstrating a customer preference for an online search experience powered by Traverz Conversational Recommendation.
"The Biglight team's reputation and expertise was crucial in delivering a credible, independent research that looked beyond the efficacy of the solution, to focus on the issues that really matter to our future clients - the wider impact of Traverz Conversational Recommendation on the customer experience and, in turn, purchase intent, brand perception and loyalty.
"The outputs from that work are now at the heart of our go to market strategy, giving us a vital springboard as we seek to drive a paradigm shift in the online product search experience."
Twan Vollebregt, Co-founder, CEO, Traverz
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The launch of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is set to be the biggest shake-up in analytics since the arrival of UA in 2012, promising powerful new insights, including:
Despite its promise, however, it's hard to imagine anyone fully switching from GA4 just yet - despite the removal of its 'beta' tag, it simply isn't yet ready for commercial use. For instance, ecommerce reporting isn't fully ready, which is why it's best to continue with UA for now.
Track in Parallel
But that doesn't mean GA4 is something that can be put off and ignored for the time being. In fact, I strongly recommend setting up a GA4 view now and running it in parallel with your existing UA set-up, for a whole host of reasons:
In summary, I can't stress enough the importance of setting up a new GA4 property sooner rather than later - to explore the advantages, avoid the pitfalls, and get to grips with the new measurement model, so you can rely on GA4 with confidence when the time comes.
- Jimmy Montgomery, Senior Data Analyst
Leave Nothing to Chance
At Biglight, we're already helping a number of brands to navigate this process, which for some has proven confusing and uncertain - helping them to double and triple check that GA4 is ready to deliver reliable, useful insight.
So, if you need support with anything from initial set-up to final migration and beyond, get in touch - we're more than happy to help.
In our fifth Biglight Briefing on 2nd December we were joined by Richard Robinson, General Manager at LeadFamly, the leading marketing gamification technology platform, to understand how game-based experiences help brands create deeper, more enduring customer engagement - and look at powerful, real world applications in retail customer experience innovation.
"Flow is the mental state a person experiences when they are completely focused on an activity like a game."
In a fascinating session, Richard explored the behavioural science behind gamification - the psychologies and innate human behaviours that make game-based mechanics so effective at driving engagement and influencing decisions at every stage of the customer journey.
He explained:
Gamification in Action
Richard also walked us through real world world examples that demonstrate the power of gamification in retail:
If you couldn't make the session, you don't have to miss out on these insights and more. You can watch the whole session here - and we hope you find it as interesting and enjoyable as we did.
A big thank you to Richard for taking part and to our partners Tech Circus for their support.
Only time will tell whether Uber's dramatic fall from grace this week following the leak of 124,000 confidential documents to The Guardian will impact its position as the dominant ride-hailing service in cities like London, but it does contain a stark warning for every brand.
Back in 2015 Tom Godwin famously asserted that "owning the interface" is where all the value and profit is - by then businesses like Uber, Alibaba and Facebook were providing indescribably thin layers that sit on top of vast supply systems (where the costs are) and interface with a huge number of people (where the money is).
This was by no means the full picture of course. The secret behind the success of disruptors like Uber wasn't just the creation of a super-usable, yet skin-deep interface, it was also the way they identified and solved real customer problems in new and innovative ways. Usable and convenient.
In time this has become a mantra for every brand, whether direct-to-consumer or business-to-business - by understanding the pain points their customers experience across their entire purchasing journey and developing new digital products and services to eliminate this pain, brands can innovate and grow.
Fast-forward to 2022 and all of a sudden this isn't enough:
Customers now expect more - They have new motivations beyond price and quality - 72% expect companies they're doing business with to understand and address their broader needs and expectations. They are ready to abandon brands that don't support their values and they are willing to pay more to those that do. Ref [1]
Sustainability is everything - Sustainability is now well and truly in the mainstream consciousness and it's about so much more than protecting the environment, it requires concrete actions towards social responsibility and economic inclusiveness. Today, more than half of consumers will switch brands and close to half will pay more to buy from brands that align with values and concerns around sustainability. Ref [2]
It's not just about the pandemic - the pace of change has accelerated for good - For evidence of that, we can look at just how big the gap between customer expectations and the real-world brand experience has become in recent years. Today, 79% of customers are changing their purchase preferences based on issues like sustainability, but brands are stuck in a past when it remained peripheral - just 36% think customers will vote with their feet (and wallets). What's more, with younger generations leading the charge in a world lurching from crisis to crisis, that change is really just beginning. Ref [3]
We have reached a tipping point, at which (using the old adage) doing things right has become as important, if not more important, than doing the right things. There is growing evidence that brands that fail to do both will be rejected by customers and that ultimately this will be a significant factor for business success.
As a result, brands must look beyond the user experience to consider every aspect of the brand experience they deliver and how effectively they communicate what they're doing - and there is no room for complacency. It's not enough to be acting in the right way, your customers and prospective customers must be aware and believe you are doing so - and this is where there is a lot of work to do.
Brands will need to understand much more about their customers - not just their needs and expectations from a transactional perspective, but also the bigger picture - their attitudes and values. They need to understand them now and as they continue to evolve.
They will need to ensure they are taking genuine steps towards a truly sustainable future, covering the huge spectrum of issues this involves, from care for the environment to inclusiveness, productive and positive employment practices, fair trade and corporation tax policies.
Finally, they need to find ways to communicate these steps to their customers and society as a whole. Whilst 65% of brands think their customers are highly aware of their sustainability initiatives, customers themselves are not so sure - 49% say they do not have information to verify sustainability claims and, as a consequence, 44% simply do not trust them. Ref [2]
So back to Uber..
Uber may still dominate the ride-hailing market, with 45,000 drivers in London alone (1 in every 200 members of the population), but unease about working conditions for drivers has hardly been a secret for some time. Maybe it's a coincidence but Uber's growth stalled some time ago, and its share price slumped.
Add to this the allegations of highly questionable business practices that are emerging on a daily basis and there's every possibility that this dominant position will be challenged in the future, as customers respond to this deluge of negative publicity and sentiment.
Meanwhile - and as if to prove the point - Beat, a Mexican ride-hailing service that uses only electric cars and offers its drivers health screening, is one of the world's fast-growing ride hailing services, despite charging roughly twice as much as Uber. Ref [4]
Make no mistake, this kind of tangible alignment with customer values - from sustainability to community - will increasingly separate the winners from the losers, so the future does undeniably belong to brands that focus on making this alignment a reality.
References
[1] Accenture, The Business of Experience
[2] Cap Gemini, How sustainability is fundamentally changing consumer perceptions
[3] Accenture, Life Re-imagined
[4] https://www.ft.com/partnercontent/beat-mobility-services/green-light-beat-the-ride-hailing-company-thats-taking-on-uber-in-latin-america.html
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Research by B2B International back in 2018 found that the increase in attention paid to the discipline of customer experience in direct-to-consumer (D2C) markets had not been matched by B2B brands and only 14% of large B2B companies were truly customer-centric.
Fast forward to 2022 and one pandemic later, with D2C brands racing to respond to the seismic shifts in customers attitudes and expectations, little has changed in the B2B arena.
So, is understanding customers and their needs, then systematically responding to them so much more difficult for B2B brands? Having reflecting on our last four projects with some of the UK's most successful B2B businesses I have good news - it really isn't.
It just takes strong intent and investment in time and yes, money.
There's no getting away from it - B2B businesses are more complex. There are more customer journeys to consider (21 in one case) and many more entities and actors involved in each journey, from colleagues to partners to customers.
But these journeys aren't more complicated, there are just more dimensions to understand and capture. This means the process of identifying these actors, mapping their end-to-end journeys and prioritising opportunities based on their unmet needs is not that different. It just takes more time and more effort.
Whilst this complexity can feel overwhelming, it doesn't need to be, there's a sea of knowledge in every B2B business that provides an invaluable source of information about customers, from Area Managers to Account Managers, technical specialists and contact centre colleagues. We've always been surrounded by experts.
This means that, although additional customer research is inevitably required, close collaboration between the experience design team and internal experts provides an incredibly efficient way to understand customers, their journeys and their needs. A much stronger starting point than in any D2C project.
B2B brands serve a broad range of customer segments, from huge "Key Accounts" to a long tail of smaller businesses. On the surface at least, the needs of these segments are very different and add an additional dimension to the work of customer experience innovation. Which segments should we focus on first?
In reality, these segments have more to unite than divide them. Yes, the different actors within a large B2B customer have different needs based on their roles (such as equipment specifier vs wearer, or restaurant manager vs chef) but these needs are also present in smaller organisations, just consolidated into fewer roles. By creating experiences that respond to these specific needs, B2B brands can make a difference.
By focusing on the experience for customers within the large and complex key accounts (which are usually managed anyway) then providing similar experiences to smaller accounts on a self-service basis, it's possible to deliver a high-quality experience to both segments and everything in-between.
Of course it's essential to identify and meet the practical needs of customers in B2B projects, such as the ability to find product specifications, food allergy information, cut ratings for protective gloves, ensure items are delivered on time, resolve any issues quickly etc, but this is only part of the story. It's also critical to meet customers' emotional needs, such as the need to build and retain trust, provide inspiration and create a sense of community and belonging. This is new territory for some B2B brands,
Thankfully, this is where experience with D2C comes in, which has taught us a great deal about understanding and responding to the motivations and expectations of customers, as well as providing experiences that are usable and convenient. By using the same techniques to understand the gap between customer needs and the current reality, we can start to explore and experiment in order to close them. B2B customers are human too.
Of course there's a lot more to becoming truly customer-centric than I've covered here. The overall B2B business landscape and its operating processes tend to be complex and there are lots of barriers to rapid change, such as legacy technologies and multi-layered organisation structures and I'm not making light of any of this. Change can be a big challenge.
But the unavoidable starting point in any journey to put customers at the centre of everything you do is to understand who they are, how they feel about the current reality of your brand experience, then set out a vision to improve it. In this limited context at least, we have found that the processes we use to achieve this in D2C businesses can be applied very effectively in a B2B context. In some areas it's easier to do and in others it's more difficult.
Yes it's hard work, it takes grit and it takes investment, but the benefits are huge. The clarity gained in understanding what your customers want provides a lens through which every subsequent business decision can then be made. It provides a purpose for measurable progress and, if iterated, sets your business on a path towards customer-centricity and even customer-obsession, which has become essential in our new age of uncertainty.
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The in-person conference season finally restarted a few weeks ago and, despite seemingly relentless tube strikes and considerable post-pandemic apathy, I've managed to get back out there and I'm really pleased I bothered.
For those who haven't been able to do the same (for the above reasons, or indeed others) I've summarised the main themes I've taken away from the events I've attended so far, as I think they represent a compelling snapshot of the post-pandemic landscape as well as a checklist for brands. It's time to act if you haven't already.
As has been the case for a while now - we need to continue our relentless quest to create convenient, engaging, personal and meaningful experiences that solve customer problems. Brands need to understand how customer expectations have changed and align the experiences they provide to match or exceed them from the practical to the emotional.
Nothing new there, but customers are more likely now than ever before to gravitate to brands that align with their values and expectations and reject those that don't. Product price and quality are still very relevant of course but - for the first time - other aspects of the overall experience have become more important when customers make brand choices.
This can be measured and this can be addressed. If you don't know how well your brand experience is aligned to the needs and expectations of your customers - it's time to find out.
It's been a while since sustainability began to transition from the realms of CSR to become a central part of the product and proposition for some brands and, my goodness, it's a very broad church indeed, from carbon emissions, plastic and water use, regenerative farming, reuse and recycling to the living wage.
There's always been a gap between what customers say about sustainable choices and what they are actually prepared to pay a premium for, because they usually cost more. But that's changing fast, as a large cohort of customers across all age groups and countries are adapting their behaviour and brands are finding ways to make sustainable choices more affordable.
We're very close to a tipping point where the sustainability choices brands make and how well they communicate them will be critical to their survival. Time to understand how you're doing and act.
Google coined the phrase "the messy middle" a few years ago to describe the part of the customer journey where inspiration happens and brand / product choices are made across channels and devices. It's hard to design for and even harder to measure.
But if we thought that was messy, it's about to get much worse. We're about to move on from omnichannel and mobile to "commerce everywhere", with an expected growth in marketplaces, social shopping and commerce embedded in a vast range of inspiration and "intertainment" experiences from video to Metaverses. We buy stories - products are souvenirs.
A bit extreme perhaps, but it's worth thinking about how much of this could actually happen for your brand. Is the traditional funnel dead?
The news isn't good - we all know that and I don't need to repeat why here. Customers are distressed as a consequence and expect more bad things to come. As the ancient Chinese curse says, we live in interesting times.
Customers will demand better and better value and those brands that provide it will do well. This is entirely consistent and complementary with the growing focus on sustainability - reducing waste, consuming less, reusing and reselling and other behaviours will become more mainstream. Sustainability can create better value.
But there's better news. Customers will also be looking for avenues for escape, they will seek new and immersive experiences and engage with sources of awe. This is a great opportunity for brands to create new experiences, new types of content, new digital products and services. Time to get creative.
It really struck me how connected these themes are. The search for value will drive more sustainable choices and sustainable choices will become better value. The search for immersive experiences as a means of escape will present opportunities for creative expression and commerce everywhere - it means we will need to think differently about the traditional buying journey.
But most of all, it's a reminder of how central customer experience innovation will be for brands to thrive and how important it is to focus more urgently than ever on creating experiences that meet every aspect of the ever-evolving needs and expectations of customers. It requires time, it requires creative thinking and it requires investment, but it can no longer be ignored.
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Back in October 2019, Nike shocked independents (and Sports Direct) by announcing it would radically reduce supply via its wholesale channel and focus on a Direct to Consumer (D2C) model, supplemented by a small number of large retail partners - predicting that "undifferentiated mediocre retail won't survive". Their words not mine.
As other brands followed suit and focused on D2C growth, tempted by ownership of the customer relationship, control over the end-to-end brand experience and the increased margins it offers, it seemed that the era of wholesale as an engine for growth was over.
Wholesale was dead. Finished.
But fast forward three years and it appears its death may have been exaggerated. This month alone, Sketchers and Puma reported >20% growth in wholesale sales, more than double that achieved in D2C, Columbia sportswear said it will "double down" on wholesale to fuel its growth and Allbirds - formerly a DTC-only brand - continued to expand its wholesale channel. Wholesale is back!
There are lots of reasons why D2C is attractive, but the constant challenge of customer acquisition, combined with infrequent purchase rates and sky-high fulfilment and returns costs aren't amongst them. D2C-focused distribution also makes it hard to shift excess stock, when combined with a full-price strategy as Nike have found recently.
Retail partnerships can help overcome these problems and offer an attractive route to growth, particularly in new markets where partners already know their customers, but they present significant challenges too - how can you scale your wholesale channel without an army of Sales Reps and Account Managers and an epic Helpdesk operation and how can you ensure you present a consistent brand experience across your partners' digital channels?
The answer isn't just to cut the long-tail of independent retailers, but to find ways to harness their specialist expertise to support and grow your brand - as Columbia recently said "to be more democratic". This involves learning from the success of the D2C channel and investing in digital innovation.
For the last 20 years in D2C we've been studying customers and the problems they are trying to solve, mapping their end-to-end journeys to identify their pain points, then creating digital products and services to eliminate this pain - the heart of digital innovation. It's time to start applying the same design-thinking approach to the wholesale channel.
The equivalent purchase journeys in wholesale are long and complex and involve more people (inside and outside the organisation), but are engaged with more frequently and have much, much higher value, so it's even more important to understand who these people are, their needs and expectations and identify how their experience can be improved - both at a practical and emotional level.
By doing this, brands have the opportunity to create self-service digital solutions that meet the needs and expectations of people across the entire wholesale purchase process, from the very early ranging decisions to content creation and the management of returns - offering the potential for better customer service, improved scalability and efficiency, as well as greater customer loyalty.
If it's enjoyable to work with a brand, people will choose to do so more often.
In addition, by understanding the content needs of retail partners across their digital channels, brands have an opportunity to produce content that meets these needs and supports much more powerful storytelling at a brand, technology and seasonal campaign level to elevate the overall brand experience.
They can also create and share the high-quality product photography and video assets partners need (either as a value-add or paid service) to present products in ways that are appealing to their customers, but also meet the standards to which the brand aspires. A huge cost and headache for both parties otherwise.
For too long the wholesale channel has been overlooked from a digital investment perspective, as brands have focused on growing their D2C businesses. As a result. there are huge opportunities for brands to apply digital innovation to the part of their businesses that supports this channel and this process is only just beginning. It represents a new phase in digital experience innovation and it's one that's seriously overdue.
It's harder to achieve than in the D2C context of course, but the needs of people in the specialist roles typically present in large Key Accounts - from buyers to digital merchandisers provide valuable clues to the motivations, needs and journeys of people in smaller organisations, where these roles are typically combined.
In addition, internal teams, such as Sales Reps and Helpdesk colleagues often know much more than is recognised about customer needs and frustrations and are often the principal users of any tools that are already available anyway. The process of understanding these needs and creating new solutions to meet them is critical.
It's not easy to do and, whilst there are always quick-wins, it involves time and investment. The long-term benefits though, in terms of ability to scale, whilst improving efficiency and brand loyalty, mean there really is no choice.
It's generally acknowledged that the increased attention paid to customer experience innovation in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets in recent years has not been matched in business-to-business (B2B) channels and that the majority of B2B businesses are still not truly customer-centric.
But the opportunity for B2B businesses to differentiate their brands and improve profitability by delivering a superior experience to their customers is huge and, given the chilly economic headwinds we now face, arguably more urgent than ever.
Over the last few years we've learned a lot about the nuances of customer behaviour across a range of B2B projects; from reimagining the way brands support retail partners to transforming B2B ecommerce experiences. All fascinating and all good.
But we've also discovered consistencies in the needs and expectations of customers (aka people) across all of these projects - here are three common themes that any B2B business can learn from and should act on right now.
B2B customers expect functionality, content and tools that help them complete their tasks at work quickly and easily - this holds for internal customers, who complete tasks for large accounts and external customers who complete the tasks themselves. These expectations are increasingly coloured by the quality of the customer experiences available outside work - why wouldn't they be?
To meet these expectations, it's important to understand the specialist tasks that people carry out, such as specifying products, ordering them and actually using them. Engaging with people in specialist roles within large accounts helps identify and prioritise these tasks and gives clues to the needs of customers in smaller accounts, where these roles are combined.
Finally, understanding the context in which people carry out these tasks is critical to designing experiences to support them - In what environment are they completed? How often? What other pressures are people under? Think busy, hot kitchens or cold, windy building sites - think late at night when the store is closed.
There is often a misalignment between the content and tools people need to get their jobs done and the digital assets businesses make available to them, with inspirational content, expert advice, access to reusable content and simple, useful tools either lacking or inaccessible.
It's not unusual to observe people trawling through websites, blogs and videos, and using spreadsheets and calculators to get things done, either because appropriate content and tools don't exist, or are hidden behind a login wall. When this happens, there are obvious opportunities to make life easier for people in accounts of all sizes.
Realigning content priorities with those of customers, starting by repurposing existing content, creating simple task-specific tools and making these accessible to all are low-cost activities with disproportionately high impact. They can also improve organic search and help with acquisition - your competitors' customers are looking for support too.
There's no doubt that customers have high expectations around range and availability, price, quality and delivery and successful B2B businesses tend to be really good at understanding these expectations and meeting them.
But given the reality (or perception) that more than one supplier can meet these practical needs, how do customers choose between them? The answer is that people then make decisions based on purely emotional criteria - how they feel about dealing with a business.
This sheds a whole new light on things and puts us slap bang into D2C territory - if people enjoy dealing with a brand, they will choose to do so more often at the expense of other brands that aren't as enjoyable to deal with. I'm afraid it's as simple as that.
"if people enjoy dealing with a brand, they will chose to do so more often"
There are a wide range of areas to consider, as these quotes show; "They're honest with me when something goes wrong", "I feel like they listen to what I have to say", "I enjoy dealing with them" and "I'm proud to be part of their community".
So it's essential to understand how people feel - good and bad - about every aspect of the end-to-end brand experience, whether this is assisted by an internal sales agent or entirely self-service, then use this insight to prioritise action to amplify the good and address the bad.
There's more complexity in B2B businesses. Customer journeys are longer, with more people involved. Organisations can be more complex with multiple legacy systems that stymie progress, so change takes longer.
In this context and faced with a myriad of options to innovate (digital or otherwise), how can business leaders begin to decide between these initiatives? The only answer is to understand who customers are and what they need - then prioritise accordingly.
"The only answer is to understand who customers are and what they need"
The good news is though, whilst there are differences between the needs of B2B customers in different contexts, the expectations people have for digital experiences to help them get tasks done quickly and simply, for content and tools to support them and for their interactions with brands to be being enjoyable are all common - so these areas wouldn't be a bad place to start.
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:
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.
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 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.
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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