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B2B Companies Must Pay Attention to Customer Service Too

TMCnews Featured Article


January 16, 2015

B2B Companies Must Pay Attention to Customer Service Too

By David Delony, Contributing Writer


While to B2B providers, it might not seem like customer service is really necessary, a new report from the Temkin Group found that the buying experience must be consistent across all channels, whether B2B or B2C.

“Companies and their channel partners can’t deliver a consistent customer experience—together or independently—when their brand promises aren’t aligned,” said Aimee Lucas, vice president at Temkin.

Temkin has outlined its findings in a new report titled “The Secret to B2B2C Customer Experience Success.”

The main problem is that no business is an island, even in the B2B world. B2B businesses, like all businesses, depend on distributors and channel partners to get their products to their customers. If the process of buying online is different from buying from a distributor, customers are going to get mad at the manufacturer rather than the distributor.


“For example, a manufacturer that invests in technology that enables its customers to do their help themselves runs the risk of creating dissonant experiences if its distributors’ online experience lags in self-service capabilities,” Lucas said.

She suggested that companies have a clear picture of the process from the business to the end-user and which hand-offs to partners can cause problems.

Some things these businesses can do is to help their channel partners develop their own customer feedback processes, use customer experience metrics and customer service software, give new product announcements and training to channel partners and use the insights gleaned from these partners to improve their own products and services.

“Companies can create this shared understanding of the end-customer’s goals, expectations, and actions by including partners in their customer journey mapping efforts and by regularly sharing customer insights gathered through its Voice of the Customer program.”

While B2B means “Business-to-Business,” as opposed to “Business-to-Consumer,” other businesses are consumers as well. It’s important to provide good service to these customers as good businesses try to do to consumers.




Edited by Alisen Downey







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