Two Rivers Marketing May 05, 2021
The brand experience is the sum of the individual interactions that customers have with your brand. More B2B brands are investing in customer experience (CX) to meet changing expectations and increase brand loyalty.
We asked our team what CX trends they are seeing and how we’re helping clients deliver a great customer experience. Here’s what they had to say.
The pandemic caused many clients to reevaluate activities. For example, prospecting became more difficult, so clients have paid more attention to their customer and dealer/distributor experiences. They’ve sought feedback through interviews and surveys and looked for ways to make the experience consistent across touchpoints, improve self-service tools, and remove points of friction.
Many clients have leaned into virtual events. Whether it be a private webinar or a virtual trade show, we’ve been helping our clients find creative ways to interact with their customers virtually. The really cool thing is that these virtual events offer a ton of customer intelligence. Session attendance, live chat transcripts, content downloads, networking lounges, and virtual sponsor or exhibitor booth interactions all provide a wealth of information. This wouldn’t have been possible at a traditional in-person event. We can use this data to tailor follow-up communication to improve the customer buying experience.
Changes in B2B buyer behavior make us realize that sales is no longer THE channel but A channel. Today, cold calls are met with the same disdain as door-to-door salespeople (FYI — they kill your brand perception). According to McKinsey & Company, more than three-quarters of B2B buyers and sellers say they now prefer digital, self-serve, and remote human engagement over face-to-face interactions. As buyers conduct more independent research online, the role of sales is evolving.
In response, clients are improving website experiences, offering more content, using LinkedIn instead of the phone to make sales rep introductions, and testing Account-Based Marketing (ABM).
People’s expectations for how they interact with brands has changed. EASE of doing business with a brand is as important as it’s ever been. Here’s a personal example:
My wife decided she wanted a piece of exercise equipment for our home. She did some research on Saturday. By Sunday morning she was leaning towards a Peloton bike and called a friend to ask about her experience. She ordered a Peloton at 1 p.m. Sunday. On Tuesday morning, two gentlemen showed up at our house with the Peloton. They set it up. And she participated in her first class in less than 48 hours. By Thursday, Peloton had sent her a direct mail offer to select a “gift” as a thank-you for her purchase.
I share this example because this is the standard for ease of doing business and personalized customer service that people are holding all brands too — even in B2B.
In multiple client industries, the most disruption we’re seeing is an increased need to integrate the brand with channel marketing partners. Brands are focused on providing a seamless end-to-end experience through their distributor/dealer channel. This is done through online storefronts, consistent selling infrastructures and processes, and brand-supported channel services like certified pre-owned inspections for equipment.
Products are getting harder to tell apart in terms of quality, features, and benefits. Many products do similar things. So how do you choose one brand over another? As Simon Sinek said, brands talk about WHAT they do and HOW they do it but they often leave out the WHY. Yet the “why” is more powerful and differentiating. In the wake of the pandemic, more B2B brands recognize the importance of their “why” and taking time to activate their brand purpose. Today, customers aren’t just making decisions based on product selection or price. They’re assessing what a brand says. What it does. What it stands for. Creating a sense of “brand belonging” through a clear and relevant purpose deepens the customer relationship.
We are even more emotional about our work-related purchase decisions. This should be taken into account when designing the customer buying experience. The decisions we make in our jobs impact our careers and how people within the company perceive us. The product or service bought might have far-reaching implications affecting entire teams, departments, and company profitability. Additionally, research shows that buying committees are getting bigger. We’re emotionally invested in bringing a lot of people along with us toward the right decision. Marketers and sellers should tap into the emotions that buyers encounter throughout the buying experience.
Emotion is what grabs the audience in the first place. A former client of mine said “the bigger the villain, the bigger the hero.” So dial up the emotion related to the market changes, trends, or pain points facing your audience.
I would replace “emotional” with “authentic.” Everyone has seen a commercial or advertisement where you can tell the brand is trying a little too hard to tug at your heart strings. We have counseled our clients to develop messaging that is as authentic as possible — which may or may not be emotional. We want to be authentic to the brand and the audience. And we want to tap into how they feel and the language they actually use.
We have found great success with user generated content (UCG). Our clients’ customers enjoy developing and sharing their own brand-specific content. So, we have been purposeful in developing opportunities for customers to create and share their content. For example, on MLB® Opening Day, asking current product owners to “show us YOUR lineup of machines and operators” allows dealers and distributors (who are also baseball fans) to engage with our brand and share their passion. Our UGC content is often more emotional than the brand content we would have likely developed.
I’ve seen more creative use of video for sales introductions and interpersonal selling. For example, a friend of mine sells insurance and would deliver quotes in person. Due to COVID-19, he bought a decent microphone and low-cost video software that he uses to deliver video quotes. He is able to go over the quotes with the same level of detail, see when his client clicks on the video, and see how long they watched. Using this approach, he saves the time spent in the car traveling and spends more of his selling time building relationships with the client. Constraints breed creativity. Gotta love it.
We’ve helped train client sales teams on how to leverage social platforms (like LinkedIn) and collaborated with clients to develop sales enablement tools to help their teams remain effective and strengthen relationships when in-person meetings are not possible.
The pandemic accelerated B2B interactions moving to digital and forced clients to take a long, hard look at their tech stack and digital tools. Clients realize that our digital experiences with B2C brands shape our expectations for digital experiences when conducting business. B2B company websites must offer similar functionality as leading B2C brands. Modern B2B sites need to offer live chat, content recommendation engines (think Netflix and Amazon), robust search functionality, and improved e-commerce. We’ve assisted clients in analyzing their current technologies and determining how to improve their customers’ experience. For example, the operational and customer service functions of a business have a huge impact on the customer’s brand experience and brand perception.
There is an intensified focus on activities to help distributors and dealers improve their digital experiences while delivering “low-touch” customer services. The pandemic created a need for more personalized services that involve a combination of digital and in-person touchpoints. For example, the mobile concierge-like experiences saw rapid development by taking the needed repair, part, and service to the customer’s location and jobsite. Providing more of these low-touch customer services as part of the buying and ownership experience will continue to be important.
To deliver the best experience and differentiate from the competition, your business must put customer experience at the center of your strategy. That means it’s more important than ever for marketing to join forces with customer service, sales, and operations. Doing this helps ensure an optimal experience at every stage of the customer journey.
For more trends, tips, and ideas, check out our B2B Guide to learn more about how digital transformation is driving the B2B experience.
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