B2B customer-experience index ratings significantly lag behind those of retail customers. B2C companies typically score in the 65 to 85 percent range, while B2B companies average less than 50 percent. The gap is expected to become even more apparent as B2B customer expectations rise.
“Real-time responsiveness and easy-to-use apps for daily banking chores or ordering groceries are setting a high bar for speed and ease of doing business in B2C industries, and these expectations are migrating to B2B,” state McKinsey & Company analysts Nicolas Maechler, Sanjeev Sahni and Martine van Oostrum.
While acknowledging that B2B customers and their buying process are more complex than in the consumer world, the authors offer these insights for improving the B2B buyer experience:
Managing rework and incidents – Rework is often a cause of significant delay for a B2B customer, extending the length and increasing the complexity of B2B customer journeys. The culprit is often internal control procedures, internal auditing or compliance requirements.
Digitizing journeys – There is great potential in the B2B realm in using concepts such as self-service, online interfaces and automated decision rules. Some organizations create client applications where all the information and interaction about a supplier’s equipment is made available, including its age, working information from equipment sensors, next scheduled maintenance visit, and an open box for user feedback.
Creating journey transparency and work cells – To navigate through the complexity of B2B customer relationships, some leading practitioners strive to build greater transparency into the customer experience improvement process.
