How do you deliver a good customer experience in B2B?

Customer experience: a major B2B conversion driver

Historically, B2B companies have always focused on the salesperson as the main driver of the customer experience. With the development of digital technology, the number of points of contact with the customer has multiplied, changing the role of the salesperson. Online, buyers need to be guaranteed the best possible experience via their e-commerce site or online store. marketplace B2B, to convert and retain customers. This strategy offers many advantages:

• Differentiate yourself from the competition: In a context of increasing online competition, standing out from the crowd is a real challenge. To do so, it's the customer experience, more than the products themselves, that makes the difference. The more unique the experience, the greater your competitive edge.

• A better brand image: Before making a purchase, the majority of buyers consult online customer reviews. This shows the importance of e-reputation and word-of-mouth for B2B merchants, as key factors in the success of your business.

• Satisfied customers: the result of a good customer experience is, above all, satisfied shoppers. Because if they're satisfied with their shopping experience, they're bound to come back. At the heart of a good customer experience, therefore, lies a strong potential for loyalty, which must be exploited at all costs.

• Boost your sales: this is the primary objective of a B2B merchant. To achieve this, developing a good customer experience is an essential must-do . This enables us to attract and retain new customers, and generate more sales.

The pillars of a good customer experience on your B2B site

Now that you've understood what's at stake in the customer experience for B2B companies, it's time to analyze the best practices to implement for your e-commerce site or your marketplace .

Understanding the customer environment

Compared to the B2C sector, the B2B environment is characterized by a certain complexity. Transactions involve contact with multiple interlocutors who have different roles within the company. This configuration calls for an in-depth analysis of the organization of these corporate customers, in order to understand how they operate and what their needs are. This marketing study forms the prior knowledge base needed to guarantee a good customer experience. The more you learn from your buyers, the better you'll be able to identify the conversion levers you need to implement.

A seamless customer experience

Faced with customers who have fully integrated multi-channel marketing, the fluidity and quality of the customer journey are essential keys to conversion. Navigation on your B2B site must be as intuitive as possible, and lead naturally to the act of buying. To achieve this, ergonomics, design, content, bug fixes and CTAs are all elements you need to take care of on your e-commerce site or your marketplace B2B. The less friction the buyer encounters, the more satisfied he'll be.

An optimal payment experience

This is the decisive moment: the customer validates his basket and proceeds to checkout. But this is also where it all comes down to it! If the buyer doesn't find the right payment solution, you could be faced with cart abandonment. To avoid this risk, we strongly advise you to offer your B2B customers a wide range of payment solutions, as well as payment facilities. In fact, deferred payment and payment in instalments, as offered by Hero are increasingly used to meet buyers' needs, and represent a real competitive advantage. They are particularly well-suited to the B2B sector, where the average shopping basket is often high and large sums of money are involved.

Humanizing customer relations

The digitalization of the B2B sector is well underway, but we mustn't neglect the role of the human element in transactions. online . Your customers need to be able to contact you easily and receive clear answers to their questions. This is an essential vector of trust, and a reassuring factor in converting and retaining B2B buyers. That's why you need to make customer service your top priority, by putting in place chatbots instant messaging and FAQs.

Measuring the customer experience

To demonstrate the success of your customer experience strategy, there's nothing like setting up performance indicators, also known as KPIs. These will enable you to evaluate customer satisfaction and the quality of services provided. There are many to choose from, and it's up to you to select the ones that seem most relevant to you: conversion rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, average shopping cart, click-through rate, average time between orders, etc.