What Is B2B Customer Service?
B2B businesses offer a variety of products and services to clients utilizing marketing solutions, including content, email, and social media marketing. But why is customer service so pivotal for your B2B company’s success? B2B clients typically have higher expectations than B2C audiences, and the sales cycle is much longer. Therefore, a high-performing marketing team must patiently convince and convert clients by curating content that fits their needs and answers their questions. Many decision-makers and stakeholders participate in discussion and research, trying to find the best vendor. The best B2B customer service examples involve marketing teams analyzing their audience’s challenges, needs and preferences, and long-term and short-term goals. Consequently, they can craft engaging and relevant content that captivates customers and proves why your company is the best suitor. The better you communicate with clients and help them troubleshoot, the more loyal they are to your brand.
Find out why impeccable B2B customer service is essential and ways you can improve it to boost sales and foster healthy and long-lasting business relationships.
Team Up With Us And Increase Brand Exposure
Want to learn how our email marketing solutions can help you gain visibility in highly targeted audiences?
The Benefits Of Successful B2B Customer Service
Boosts Revenue
Did you know that customers are 3.5 times more likely to purchase after a wonderful customer service experience while companies risk losing 9.5% of their revenue if they deliver bad services? Yes, B2B customers require more attention, and you should stay in regular contact with them to answer potential questions and provide assistance. But it’s all worth it, as the return is sizeable. So, not only does your ROI increase, but you also minimize the possibility of clients leaving you for a competitor. The customer experience is an investment worth your time and money, as the monetary gains are substantial.
Decreases Churn
SaaS startups and B2B enterprises are often plagued with customer churn, as bad experiences drive clients away and straight to your competition’s doorstep. To increase customer satisfaction, your trained sales representatives should always strive to meet—and even exceed—expectations. They should also be proactive and communicate with clients frequently to address even the slightest issue before it becomes unmanageable. You may start using customer success management software to keep track of each client’s results and help them solve every challenge promptly so that they are more likely to come back to you with a strong sense of loyalty.
Improves Reputation
If you’re wondering how to get more customers for your company, customer advocacy should be among your top priorities. Having loyal customers is one thing, but creating brand advocates is a whole new level of loyalty. Keeping your B2B customers happy means that you make them your fans and very likely to suggest your services to their colleagues or inner circle. Additionally, they may provide detailed testimonials and reviews and strengthen your social proof. Over time, a positive customer experience in B2B creates brand ambassadors that influence decision-makers and stakeholders, helping you grow. Case study articles are particularly effective at showcasing your expertise. If you want to publish one and increase your viewership, you can use eLearning Industry and its vast audience to increase awareness.
Reduces Resolution Time
Imagine a company that offers you email marketing services and their operational system crashes or glitches. This inconvenience can cause further issues, as you may not be able to answer your customers’ emails and, therefore, delay your response. The best B2B customer service examples deal with such issues and restore operations swiftly to ensure your clients’ downtime is minimal. Speaking of email marketing services, if you are on the hunt for a great collaborator, eLearning Industry can help you gain visibility by featuring your brand in one of our emails to our audience of 50,000 subscribers. Click the link to view your options.
The Core Differences Between B2B And B2C Customer Service
Some of the most famous B2C businesses are Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify, whose goal is to cater their services to individuals and not corporations. Their prices are much lower, while they rely heavily on the benefits of AI in marketing to automate most processes and allow customers to self-navigate. Marketers don’t have to stress too much about slower response times, as clients are expected to wait a few days for an answer.
Business-to-business services differ heavily. B2B customer service must build and maintain relationships not with individuals but with entire teams. Turnover in large businesses is quite common, so you should foster positive interactions and loyal relationships with professionals from different teams. The sales cycle is longer, and B2B sales support must be patient since there are many legalities and permissions involved.
Additionally, business-to-business customers usually have more urgent queries that require an immediate solution. For this reason, your workforce must include a 24-hour customer service team dealing with emergencies. While you may incorporate chatbots, they are not enough to deal with pressing issues that would be better handled by an expert employee. Lastly, B2B relationships last longer when clients connect with a specific representative and know they can always turn to them for assistance.
8 Best Practices To Improve The Level Of Your Customer Service
1. Be Proactive
Simply offering a wonderful B2B service won’t get people to buy your product. Some of the best B2B customer service examples are impeccable, meaning proactive. This means that you should anticipate the potential problems and hiccups your clients may face. To do that, you must research your niche and identify issues other businesses face in their operations. For instance, retailers may stumble upon shipping delays and interruptions. You can utilize automation to inform customers of such delays so they are aware of the situation and don’t get frustrated. Also, you should frequently ask for feedback to locate areas for improvement and swiftly apply changes. Proactivity helps increase retention and customer lifetime value (CLV).
2. Utilize Clear Service Level Agreements
Service level agreements (SLAs) are a standard practice that the best B2B customer experience companies follow to guarantee accurate, regulated, and excellent services. For example, healthcare companies should be compliant with HIPAA, while government services should abide by certain security regulations. Other examples of SLAs include companies promising a 24-hour response to customer queries or 99% server uptime. These features are mentioned in an SLA and create a clear path for meeting expectations and clearing any misunderstanding. To create a detailed agreement, you should mention the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved and the results you expect. Additionally, you should establish measurable service levels and guidelines regarding monitoring and resolution. You can review your SLAs regularly and apply relevant changes.
3. Create Self-Service Portals
The global pandemic created a thirst for self-service options that allow not only B2C but also B2B clients to navigate themselves online and make their preferred purchases. While some B2B customer service examples are complicated and require human interaction and assistance, many companies have in-house experts who can solve any technical issues that may arise. Building a functional and easily accessible eCommerce platform is the first step to strengthening your brand’s self-service options. You should add an online chat function and a page dedicated to frequently asked questions (FAQs). Additionally, you may include product documentation, how-to guides, tutorials, and informative blog posts explaining your product’s usability. Make sure you research your industry to understand what problems your audience often comes across and train your sales professionals to deal with complex matters that require more time and effort to resolve. If you want your blog posts to gain extra visibility, eLearning Industry can help you get exposure to our 852,000 monthly readers.
4. Personalize
What can be said with certainty about customers in the B2B market? Most of them expect personalized experiences that speak directly to their needs and challenges. Not only does personalization make everyone feel valued and appreciated, but it also increases your conversion rate by 8%. Yet, to personalize your content, you must conduct efficient customer profiling and understand each company’s unique needs and pain points. Your B2B marketing strategy should be customer-centric, meaning that you should gather, analyze, and utilize each prospect’s preferences accordingly. When you craft your emails, make sure to address them using their names and provide product recommendations based on past purchases. Finally, use their preferred communication channel, where they are most active.
5. Invest In New Technologies
The future of digital marketing keeps changing, and along with it, many new technologies emerge. For instance, sales representatives used to approach clients exclusively via cold calling. However, things have changed, and now marketing leaders build promotional campaigns that reach thousands of potential clients a lot quicker. First, you need to stay in contact with clients on different platforms, including email, social media, and live chat. Also, you can utilize CRM software to keep track of every impression, interaction, and requirement of your customers so you can tailor your suggestions accordingly, and implement automated responses where feasible to keep them updated. Last but not least, you can gather insights about each company’s preferences to understand their needs and desires and promote relevant content.
6. Offer Post-Purchase Support
What differentiates top from poor B2B customer service is the way you approach post-purchase support. Many companies focus solely on closing deals and forget all about their clients afterward. A simple thank-you email isn’t enough for paying customers to feel connected to your brand. You must keep in touch on social media, email, and even phone and provide additional assistance. For example, content marketing experts can send clients tutorials, how-to guides, and educational blog posts. Some companies may need further onboarding direction if they don’t have in-house technical experts. The more connected you remain with customers, the higher the chances you have to upsell and cross-sell. eLearning Industry can help you craft an engaging and transformative content strategy by providing expert SEO tips and promoting your content to our loyal readers. Does it interest you? Click here to find out more.
7. Train Your Team Members
B2B sales support employees should be exceptionally trained on your product or service: do they know what your company offers and how it helps businesses improve their operations? And that’s not all. They must have the necessary soft skills to communicate effectively and with empathy. To get local customers and global audiences, their skills should align with company values, and they should master their problem-solving abilities. After you train your team members and help them evolve into your ideal sales representatives, you have to provide them with regular feedback. Are they treating B2B clients and their queries properly? What improvements should they make? If they receive customer reviews and comments frequently, they will improve themselves and provide even better customer service.
8. Streamline
How can you streamline B2B customer support effectively and increase client satisfaction? Apart from adopting an omnichannel approach, with email, social media, and phone calls, you may use one of the top applications of Artificial Intelligence: chatbots. While AI can’t converse with customers like humans can, it can answer common questions, provide self-service options, and direct queries to the corresponding professionals. Furthermore, streamlining allows you to automate ticketing processes that can be time-consuming and tiresome. Lastly, enforcing knowledge bases helps customers locate answers and find solutions without putting an extra burden on B2B customer service agents. Consequently, you reduce the friction that occurs when clients face hardships they can’t solve quickly.
Industries That Must Utilize B2B Customer Service Efficiently
Finance
If you work in the finance sector, you probably know how serious handling other people’s money is. Professionals in this industry must abide by strict laws and regulations and be knowledgeable of data privacy rules and cybersecurity. B2B customer support should come from a place of empathy and understanding, as people and companies depend on you for their livelihood and monetary confidence. So, train your sales representatives and customer service employees to be empathetic and put themselves in your customers’ shoes. When they can fully grasp the urgency of every issue they’re dealing with, they are more likely to strive to solve it quickly.
SaaS
SaaS is undoubtedly one of the most common B2B products. Electronic customer relationship marketing (eCRM) software and project management software are very effective at addressing and resolving various company issues. Basically, they ensure sales professionals know the needs and challenges of each client so they can work toward fixing them. Moreover, SaaS companies offer assistance and build strong customer relationships by staying in touch with collaborators along the way. They don’t make it look like they only care about renewing contracts and cashing checks. Nurturing trusting relationships is crucial to fostering success and growth.
Marketing
Content marketing for B2B is the most effective way companies offer value and practical assistance to their target audience. Companies offering content marketing services promote and often create engaging and relevant content that addresses common matters and challenges businesses in their field face regularly. They may also invest in webinar marketing to promote their events and communicate with clients on a more personal level. Once they know enough about each prospect, they can segment their email list and curate personalized templates and content that best fit each buyer persona’s needs. In other words, they put their clients first and try to understand what motivates them and what worries them about their day-to-day practices.
Examples Of Impeccable B2B Customer Service
Healthcare
Midsouth Pain Treatment Center is a pain management provider that has managed to elevate its services and improve many important metrics thanks to its excellent customer service. The company invested in training its customer service representatives with the necessary communication and administrative skills. They automated processes and created a detailed reporting system that highlighted each patient’s unique needs and conversations with the company. Apart from making informed decisions, they noticed several other benefits. Their appointment bookings increased from 23% to 27%, and their weekly referrals skyrocketed to 322, which was a 19.7% increase.
EdTech
OneFile is an EdTech company that has received the Customer Service Excellence accolade every single year since 2016. It is one of the best B2B customer service examples, with 20 years of experience and collaborations with 700+ corporations. The company’s trained team members do not rest after they’ve made a sale. They provide excellent onboarding experiences, and their representatives are available at all times to assist clients. They employ onboarding experts, customer success managers, and a help center that guides customers from day one. Their omnichannel support reaches an impressive 98% customer satisfaction rate, while potential clients can reach them via phone, email, support portal tickets, and live chat.
Travel Bookings
You probably know many travel booking platforms, with some of them helping you save money. But how many of them have received the acclaimed ServiceMark accreditation? Clarity is a company that not only helps you book your travels but also manages your expenses and improves your savings. The company employs different teams working on various tasks organized in one centralized system. They implement automated ticket assignments so the right agents can work on the corresponding matters. As a result, customer satisfaction is at a magnificent 96% with an NPS of 81. Their B2B sales support system is so carefully crafted that every single query is treated with equal urgency.
CRM Software
Another wonderful B2B customer service example is the CRM software known as PipelineDeals. The B2B company has been growing fast since 2006 and has been included in the annual Inc. 5000 list a few times. What makes them such a successful B2B customer experience company? The level of customer service they offer is close to unmatched, as they have incorporated a cloud phone solution that guarantees human interaction no matter the time of day. Half of the company’s support employees work remotely for their B2B call center, offering exceptional support. Additionally, the company trains new representatives extensively and monitors their performance. If needed, they loop in other experts to assist in more complex situations.
Packaging
How did Tetra Pak become the leading packaging brand we know today? Its success didn’t come overnight. The company implemented user-friendly surveys, detailed data, and feedback insights to improve its services. Previously, it took the conglomerate up to 15 days to answer queries, while now it takes them less than 48 hours. They offer 24/7 customer support service and utilize role-based dashboards. This way, representatives pick up the tasks that best suit their responsibilities and talents. Additionally, every team member is offered the opportunity to add and review questions on customer surveys. The company also uses enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and product information management (PIM) systems to better control its customer service quality.
Enterprise Data Storage
Although in quite a small niche, Qumulo has managed to find tremendous success due to its unique approach to B2B customer service. For starters, every customer receives their very own customer success representative as the company works hard to remain proactive. They believe that this approach creates advocates who increase referrals. Moreover, they offer various communication channels, including a dedicated online community, a customer care team, and a cloud-based monitoring system. What makes their approach unique is how they manage issues before the customer even creates a ticket. The moment a client enables the cloud platform, the customer success team receives notifications informing them of potential issues. The team then contacts the client immediately to discuss the problem.
HVAC
Ingersoll Rand is one of the brightest B2B customer service examples in the HVAC business since they had to find an effective way to handle 6500 tickets every single month. They started using AI to segment their audience by location, and Internet of Things-enabled products to be aware of unique requirements and needs. Additionally, they installed an automatic alert system for climate and weather changes. This way, they managed to assist clients on time and adhered to their response time by 95%, as well as improved their customer satisfaction (CSAT) score by 35%. Another trick they used to improve their B2B sales support was partnering up with UPS. The genius integration helps them generate delivery and return labels swiftly.
Shipping
FedEx is one of the most trusted shipping companies worldwide, and there is a valid reason its B2B and B2C customers love it. For starters, the automated message at the beginning of each call coming into their call center asks customers for a few personal details. Based on each person’s needs, they are then redirected to the most suitable agent, who has access to the information and doesn’t need to repeat any questions. Moreover, the company allows clients to receive shipping notifications about delivery times and potential delays and interruptions. Not only are their representatives extremely helpful, but the company also features a detailed FAQ page on its website and allows customers to redirect their packages to safe locations if they are away from home.
Key Takeaway
Now that you know what B2B customer service is, you understand how crucial it is for accelerating business growth. Companies that treat their customers like royalty build a powerful reputation that brings new clientele daily, increases their revenue, and fosters loyalty. Not having to deal with churn is necessary, but you have to be proactive in your practices; don’t wait until people start complaining about your services. Do research by sending out surveys and gathering feedback from your paying customers. Understand what the pain points are and how you can improve your B2B support services. To achieve that, the brightest B2B customer service examples have invested time and resources in training their staff and purchasing the right technology.
But how can you find B2B clients in the first place? Whether you are now venturing into the B2B world or jumping over from the B2C field, you may need to utilize smart content marketing ideas. Your audience must see how you can help them achieve their goals and that you recognize their challenges. To make your product’s features even more appealing, you may need to optimize your landing page.
