The move towards digital customer self-service is a trend most B2B organisations are getting on board with. A recent McKinsey and Company APAC study highlighted the dramatic shift from in-person selling to digital selling since the onset of COVID in 2020.
‘Only 20–30% of B2B buyers want to ever interact with reps in person even in their ideal/post-COVID-19 model’.
B2B organisations still selling and taking orders through traditional channels (phone/email) or clunky online systems, are running the risk their customers will move to competitors that offer a user-friendly digital self-service model.
So what exactly does digital self-service entail and why does your business need it? Digital self-service is an online solution enabling customers to be completely autonomous on a website and provides an optimised and personalised customer experience.
Here are our top 4 reasons why giving your customers the option to self-serve digitally will improve customer satisfaction and your bottom line.
1. Not bound by 9-5
Customer self-service has become even more critical for B2B organisations this year. Customers now expect to be able to order products online and access account information and invoicing, when it suits them. If you are expecting your customers to only order from you during working hours, you are potentially missing out on a lot of sales. Your customers are business owners like yourself and are going to be frustrated by such a rigid time frame to place an order with you.
2. Find relevant information quickly
If your customers need to phone, visit in-person or even email your office to find out information about their account, you are wasting their time and yours. All this information should and can be online in one easy-to-find place along with the ability to view past invoices and orders and re-order products with the click of a button. By personalising your customer ordering experience to suit any contracted pricing and product agreements, you very quickly put the right information in their hands so they can order from you with ease.
3. Full control over interactions
‘95% of B2B buyers claim they will make a purchase in an end-to-end, digital self-serve model, with the vast majority very comfortable spending $50K or more online.’ McKinsey and Company APAC, 2020
If you have your products online with good quality photos/videos, clear product descriptions and customer-specific pricing, your customers don’t need a salesperson to process their order. Free up time for your sales team and give your customers the control over when and how they purchase. If you have a retail component, you can even implement upsell and cross-sell promotions on your web ordering system to help push your average order value.
4. Reduce manual errors and customer frustration
If any part of your ordering process includes staff input, then you are opening the process up to errors. The more human touch points you have along the way, the more room for error and customer frustration at incorrect or delayed orders. By giving your customers a self-service ordering system, the order is handled from cart to warehouse in a seamless and efficient way. Integrating your ordering system with your Finance, CRM or any other internal systems, will give you and your customers an error-free experience.
If you want to increase your sales, decrease manual errors and provide your customers with a positive 24/7, self-service experience, get in touch with a ComCloud specialist today for a no obligation chat.
