What is B2B Customer Service and How to Improve it With Examples and Tips
It’s common knowledge that the sales and marketing strategies to win over B2B clients are very different from those that are used to attract B2C customers. We use different channels, expect different behaviors and create specific personas for each of these buyers. Similarly, when it comes to customer support, B2B customers have unique needs and resolution journeys that make B2B customer service a distinct category by itself.
In this blog, we’ll dive further into how B2B customer support is different from B2C customer service, along with examples and tips to ace customer service in B2B companies.
Before we jump in, let’s look at what customer service means in a B2B environment.
What is B2B customer service?
B2B companies – or businesses that sell products or services to other businesses – are heavily dependent on customer loyalty and customer retention for predictable revenue growth. Due to larger deal sizes and longer buying cycles, B2B companies – both software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and service providers – rely on building long-term client relationships that drive growth.
And guess what? 72% of B2B buyers1 point to real-time, always-on customer service as one of the key factors in boosting customer loyalty. B2B customer service is all about ensuring continuity of your product or service operations by providing quick responses, prompt troubleshooting, and fast resolutions whenever your customers face any challenges.
Since multiple stakeholders and larger teams are involved in B2B transactions, it’s also important to be more proactive and contextual in your support interactions.
B2B companies expect a more hands-on approach when it comes to customer service. In fact, it is very common in B2B customer service to have ‘Customer Success Managers’ mapped to certain high ticket accounts, instead of just assigning support agents. But is this high effort strategy worth it?
How does customer service help B2B companies?
Imagine this – you buy a set of headphones online, but the pair you receive is damaged. The solution is simple enough – you can get in touch with a support agent and request a replacement. The support agent doesn’t require too much context, and the request can be resolved without a lot of effort.
On the other hand, what if you have purchased a software tool for your company that users are not happy with? Not only is this a problem for multiple users who may not be able to go about their work, but you also need to show a return on your investment. B2B customer experience plays a critical role in whether you will continue using and repurchasing the product or churn in favor of another option.
Let’s look at two direct consequences of how B2B customer support can impact a company’s balance sheet.
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How B2B customer service impacts revenue and growth
When creating a strategy for your B2B customer service, remember that though B2B customers require higher effort, they also offer higher returns. Creating a more hands-on approach with these customers is critical to improving the lifetime value of each account.
Depending on the size of the customer, one sale can have a significant effect on your revenue and margins. Similarly, providing delightful and dependable customer service will ensure that the customer not only renews their contract with you but will be more open to upsells or cross-sells of adjacent products or services.
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How B2B customer service impacts your brand
The fastest way to gain a good reputation in the market is to let your customers do the talking for you. But you have to earn this reputation. This means ensuring your customers are always treated well, and those customers that champion your brand should be rewarded with something extra.
The reward you gain for providing excellent customer service is that your customers will become brand evangelists – offering testimonials and public reviews that encourage other potential customers to make a purchase decision.
The power of promotion also has a direct correlation to the name and value attached to your brand in the market. It’s a win-win situation since clients love to partner with the hottest or fastest-growing companies in the market.
What is the difference between B2C and B2B customer service?
The way you evaluate and decide on purchasing a B2C product subscription such as Netflix differs widely from onboarding a CRM product for your organization. Likewise, given the number of stakeholders and SLA clauses involved in B2B customer support, there’s a stark difference between customer service in B2B and B2C companies due to the following reasons.
1. B2B customer issues are highly complex
B2B companies are more likely to have problems that are complex and unique to each customer. Solving these problems usually requires a considerable amount of time and effort, and often requires multiple teams to get solved.
Even when it’s a new problem, it usually takes a while to fix. For example, problems involving a server issue, or a product functionality issue usually take hours to resolve and require coordination with the product and IT teams.
B2C issues are more singular in nature. It usually does not have too many elements and can be resolved quickly by following a certain number of steps.
2. True personalization is more complicated in B2B customer service
B2C customers enjoy a level of personalization that we never thought was possible. For example, if you are using an e-commerce application, based on your previous orders, you are given suggestions on what kind of items may be of interest to you.
On the other hand, B2B customers often invest significantly and expect more than first name personalization from their vendors, such as the agility to solve urgent issues on priority. They may also expect custom integrations with their existing software suite or dedicated support resources for the smooth functioning of their business.
Related resource: B2B vs. B2C customer service interactions
3. B2B customer relationships are not transactional and involve several stakeholders
Relationships are the bedrock of B2B customer engagement. While a solid product with a great sales pitch will get you in the door, strong customer relationships will ensure you get a long-term seat in the room.
Unlike business-to-consumer interactions that are usually isolated and mostly transactional, Business to Business works on a relationship-driven model, which makes customer service a central part of any business you conduct with a B2B customer.
Let’s take a payment issue with a food delivery app. It only takes a couple of steps for the agent to process the refund once you have raised the complaint. This marks the end of your conversation with the support agent.
But in a B2B scenario, payment issues will require the efforts of multiple teams since it involves complex legal and financial conditions that have to be evaluated for the issue to be resolved. This puts a lot of emphasis on B2B customer relationship management to make situations like the above easier to navigate.
Two examples of B2B customer service to inspire you
1. OneFile:
Leading UK-based EdTech and apprenticeship SaaS company – OneFile prioritizes positive experiences across the learning journey and has a Royal approval under its belt.
Supporting 1.2 million users for nearly 20 years across 700+ organizations, they recently received the ‘Queen’s Award for Enterprises’ to recognize their efforts in developing successful and innovative software products.
The company is known for its outstanding customer service, retaining the ‘Customer Service Excellence’ accreditation year after year since 2016. Their customer service philosophy is crystal clear– ‘By your side. Supporting your delivery from day one.’
From onboarding new customers to offering technical support, OneFile ensures that their support is easily available and accessible to customers. Onboarding specialists, dedicated customer success managers, and a state-of-the-art help center built on Freshdesk come together to guide their users along an effortless customer journey.
The customer support team is open to customer queries across email, phone calls, support portal tickets, and live chat after implementing Freshdesk Omnichannel. Breaking internal data silos, the OneFile support team gives faster responses with Freshdesk, achieving 98% customer satisfaction.
2. Clarity:
Clarity is a multi-product corporate travel B2B company that helps businesses make travel bookings, manage travel expenses, and optimize savings. Being a customer-centric business, they strive to improve and deliver excellent customer service consistently.
Understanding that customer service is the prime differentiator for their business, Clarity is a member of the UK’s ‘Institute of Customer Service’ to continually learn and adopt customer service best practices. They’re also on their way to obtaining the ServiceMark accreditation that further seals their commitment to customer service excellence.
Operating as multiple support teams that specialize in catering to the distinct customer needs of every sector, Clarity ensured that their customer service teams remained centralized and in sync by using Freshdesk. Automated ticket assignment workflows ensured that the right agents worked on the right request type.
This simplified operations and helped them achieve high customer satisfaction scores of 96% and an NPS of 81. Their high standards of delivering superior customer experiences make them a notable example of practicing stellar B2B customer service as a competitive advantage to drive business growth.
7 Ways to improve B2B customer service using a help desk
Customer service is all about making an impression. 31% of consumers globally are willing to pay more for a great customer service experience2.
A B2B help desk can help smoothen out all the rough edges in your customer service while greatly improving the experience you provide. Here are the ways a B2B customer support software can be resourceful to your team.
#1 Use conversational history to maintain relevant context
B2B businesses face complex issues, which makes it all the more important that everyone involved in solving the problem knows the history of the issue. Customers also expect that the agent already knows the context of his issue even if this is their first interaction with them. And if you have successfully retained a long-term client, it’s likely that the account has changed hands between relationship managers, and multiple agents have worked on a single customer’s issues.
Freshdesk allows you to maintain contextual history through the activity log feature. It allows an agent to pick up any customer ticket, and see all the actions that have taken place since its creation. This includes status changes, who’s worked on it, and all conversations that have taken place with the customer. This snapshot of issue history is a great way to ensure everyone in your support team is on the same page.
#2 Collaborate effectively with other teams to solve issues faster
When dealing with B2B customer issues, you might need to involve other teams depending on the type and complexity of the problem. But collaboration can be difficult and time-consuming when there are many details to communicate with different people in a short amount of time.
Using a B2B customer service software like Freshdesk you can share the ownership of tickets with other teams, giving them the same visibility into the issue as your support team.
Often, there will be a need to provide instant context to another agent or someone from another team. On Freshdesk, collaboration happens right within the ticket thread by simply adding the required person to the conversation.
That person will now have all the relevant information to solve the issue and you can update the customer on the status in real-time. Freshdesk further eases internal collaboration and communication by integrating seamlessly with commonly used B2B project management and operations tools like Jira and Slack.
#3 Allow customers the flexibility of choosing their communication channel
67% of consumers globally use 3 or more channels regularly to engage with a brand today.2
Customers should be given the option of choosing how they can reach out to you. Mail, chat, call or social media are different channels you can open up to customers as a way of contacting your support team.
To provide an omnichannel experience you need to maintain a single version of all your customer information. Freshdesk has a unified customer database that does this, ensuring you always know which customer is reaching out from which channel.
Freshdesk’s omnichannel capability can convert any conversation regardless of the channel used into a ticket. The agent can also then respond on the same channel from within Freshdesk itself.
#4 Take advantage of self-service capabilities
Digital self-service is a necessity not just for B2C consumers but also for the complex B2B environment. B2B customers want the freedom to explore and know more about how to use the B2B products or services better and take the first steps in resolving challenges by themselves before reaching out to the company’s customer support team.
A Forrester study3 indicates that offering effective self-service options like support portals and AI-powered chatbots, deflect ticket volumes by 27%. On Freshdesk, you can host a customized B2B self-service portal with well-categorized FAQ pages and guides. The exhaustive knowledge base can help customers find fixes by themselves, and the portal can also have the provision to raise a ticket if your customers need any additional assistance.
Related resource: What is a self-service portal?
#5 Proactively deal with customer issues
It’s not enough for organizations to just be reactive to issues. Customers can be left frustrated if they are made to wait for an update after the problem has already occurred.
Being proactive means you are anticipating an issue happening and you reach out to customers beforehand to inform them about it while also stating how your support team is working to fix it
For example, if one of your servers is down and you expect a delay in getting it back up, you can inform your customers about the same with a proactive outreach email before they come to you with a complaint.
In a B2B customer support software like Freshdesk, you can set up an email outreach that explains everything customers need to know about this issue, and how quickly they can expect it to be resolved right from your help desk.
#6 Track and act on customer feedback
The core of maintaining good B2B customer relationships is to connect with your customers frequently and seek their feedback on a regular basis. Customer success managers or assigned account executives often reach out to their B2B clients to find out if –
- Customers are continually satisfied with their products and services,
- B2B clients face any challenges in using their services,
- Users what any specific features that can be included in the product roadmap,
- Customers what to do more in the future with your products or services.
Actively gathering these insights from customer feedback periodically helps maintain account hygiene and reduce churn rates.
Related resource: The complete guide to gathering customer feedback
Also, when customers reach out to you for support, you can gauge how satisfied or effortless their interactions were with you by triggering customer satisfaction surveys and measuring customer effort scores directly from your helpdesk software.
#7 Improve the speed and quality of customer service with automation
Given the importance of building customer relationships in B2B, support teams should be able to dedicate a good chunk of their time to it. But quite often, redundant, time-consuming tasks end up wasting the customer support team’s time.
With help desk automation, this situation can be avoided. Within Freshdesk, you can create specific rules based on event and time triggers so that repetitive tasks such as ticket assignment, status updates, etc happen automatically.
For example, you might have a dedicated account manager for a particular customer. Using the customer name as a filtering criterion you can create an automation rule that reroutes every issue to that customer’s account manager.
Freshdesk also allows you to deploy specific SLA policies for different tiers of customers, helping you deliver quality support with effective SLA management.
The Finer Details Matter The Most In B2B Customer Service
B2B customer support effectively comes down to the finer margins. Going through every aspect of your B2B customer service with a fine-toothed comb is a necessary first step. This exercise will help you map out the aspects of customer service that you need to focus on.
By maximizing the potential of a helpdesk, it becomes a lot easier to work on these aspects and deliver an amazing B2B service experience. Given the time-consuming nature of B2B customer relationships, making customer service a differentiator will help you stand out from the competition. In the long run, customer service will play a crucial role in helping your business achieve customer advocacy.
Updated on May 27, 2022
Source:
1.https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-b2b-growth-equation
2.https://www.freshworks.com/resources/reports/the-new-rules-of-customer-engagement
3.https://freshdesk.com/resources/freshdesk-roi-forrester
