The rise of new tech trends has taken customer expectations to the next level. B2B customers have become more demanding. The quality of interactions with your company determines whether they will purchase from you.
To meet the needs of modern customers, B2B companies have started investing more in customer experiences. If you are one of them, consider replicating Amazon’s company culture.
Amazon is the world’s most famous user-oriented corporation. “We’re not competitor-obsessed, we’re customer-obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards,” Jeff Bezos explained once.
Here are a few key steps to take to inject the “Amazon Effect” into your CX strategy.
Map out Customer Journeys
One of the main advantages of Amazon over its competitors lies in the fact that it understands its customers and their needs so it can provide seamless experiences at every touchpoint. It continuously listens to its customers to give them what they need, before they even need it.
Just like B2C companies, B2B businesses need to analyze and map out all customer touchpoints.
Namely, when creating marketing or customer support strategies, B2B companies often underestimate the complexity of a B2B sales cycle.
In the B2B ecosystem, organizations have multiple touchpoints with your business before deciding to purchase. Unlike in the B2C world, where you are managing the relationship with a single customer, in B2B, there are several people actively involved in the buying process.
Therefore, the B2B sales cycle is longer. Statistics say that 75% of B2B deals take at least four months to close, while 46% of B2B customers take seven months or more to make a purchasing decision.
To create a user-centric marketing strategy, you need to map out B2B customers’ journeys and identify their touchpoints. Answer the following questions:
- What touchpoints are involved in the customer journey?
- How did your customers learn about you?
- What channels did they use during the purchase?
- What happened after the sale?
- Which customers are involved in each stage of a buyer journey?
- How is your B2B company currently performing at each of these touchpoints?
Only by fully understanding your B2B sales pipeline will you be able to create an effective, user-oriented marketing strategy that resonates with customers at different stages of a buyer journey.
Provide Exceptional Customer Support
B2B customers choose brands based on their previous experiences. To meet their needs in real-time, across all channels they use, you need to build a seamless omnichannel customer service strategy.
And, that is where exactly Amazon can inspire you.
Create a B2B company that knows to listen
When wanting to solve complex problems or familiarize themselves with your products, many customers will choose to talk to your customer service reps over chatting with them online.
A call center is a treasure trove of customer information. And, Amazon knows that. Jeff Bezos explained that the company invites employees to attend two days of call-center training, where they learn to listen and understand their customers and not just talk to them.
Your customers should take notes when talking to customers to understand what their major problems with your brand are. To help them focus on customer conversations and, yet, collect the right customer data, you should equip them with the right tools. For example, with online phone systems, your employees can record calls to analyze them and assess the brand sentiment.
Provide omnichannel customer support
Today’s customers expect brands to get back to them in real-time, irrespective of the channel they use. Since Amazon’s mission is to become the “Earth’s most customer-centric company,” they understand the importance of omnichannel support. They provide immediate customer service via phone, chat, and email. Most importantly, their live agents are available 24/7 and they rarely put callers on hold.
To maximize the effectiveness of your call center, consider replacing your old analog phone system with the online one. One of the core principles of VoIP services is their mobility and user-friendliness. They are built on the cloud, meaning your customer service reps will be available across both mobile and desktop devices.
Offer self-service opportunities
To cater to customers that want to find answers to their questions themselves, Amazon provides comprehensive self-service options.
They have a detailed knowledge base, where they include helpful articles and practical tips. The knowledge base even offers a search box to help customers easily navigate through the content and find the desired content faster.
Amazon also provides an online community, where customers connect, ask questions, provide recommendations, share experiences, and help each other. Creating an online community on the right digital channels will make your B2B brand more approachable and transparent.
Drive Personalization
Personalization is Amazon’s trademark. It is the secret ingredient that attracts customers and inspires their loyalty. Namely, the company uses Amazon Personalize, a machine learning algorithm that tracks customers’ activities and provides individualized recommendations. It analyzes a wide range of factors, such as customers’ browsing patterns, geolocation, previous purchases, products they viewed, to personalize product recommendations in real-time.
For each product on their website, they provide detailed descriptions, customer reviews and ratings, and quick tips on how to use them the best.
They also include a highly targeted “Frequently Bought Together” section that serves to upsell customers by providing them with relevant products similar to the one they clicked on.
Sure, there are many ways to use personalization on your website, from using chatbots to leveraging AI technologies to provide better insights into your products.
B2B Customer Experiences Should Be your Driver for Innovation
Amazon teaches us an important thing – customer experience should not be your next corporate initiative that will help you boost your marketing ROI. It should be the foundation of your B2B business, directly impacting its core values and missions.
This international tech company also proves that there is no set-and-forget CX strategy. If you observe its development over time, you will understand that they have always been implementing new technologies to drive creativity and innovation.
In the era of hyper-personalization in marketing, building a customer-oriented B2B company will help you build trust with customers and inspire their loyalty in the long-run.
How does Amazon inspire your B2B company to improve CX? We are listening!
The original version of this article was first published on V3Broadsuite.
- Top Tactics for a Winning SaaS Marketing Strategy in 2021 - June 17, 2021
- Top Ways to Leverage Tech to Boost Customer Engagement in Retail - May 24, 2021
- Top Tips for Efficient Communication with Your SEO Team - April 1, 2021
