At Pitney Bowes, the commitment to delivering a great customer experience is our North Star, guiding everything we do, but we’re still learning. Over the past year, we’ve adapted the service and the experience we deliver to our clients, to help meet their evolving needs. Here’s how we see the customer experience going forward:
1. Your clients will expect deeper levels of personalization
Just
as we expect consumer brands to ‘know’ us and our preferences, the same is true
with the B2B customer experience. B2B decision-makers want humanizing, personalized,
helpful, and relevant experiences to reduce complexity and save them time. They
want businesses to anticipate their requirements beyond the ‘You liked that,
now try this’ algorithm. Achieving this isn’t a Holy Grail of customer experience:
it’s about building relationships, enhanced by data, tools, and automation,
combined with intelligence gathered from every interaction.
2. Self-service will remain popular
The
ability to problem-solve quickly and efficiently using digital tools is a
preference we’ve experienced within our own clients over the past year. We’ve
seen a growing number of clients using our web self-service tools. Even with
complex B2B products and services, the option to self-serve plays a key role in
delivering a great B2B customer experience. The Salesforce study found 65%
would prefer to help themselves through self-service for simple issues. But
self-serve won’t just be for issues resolution: McKinsey found
that 97% 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.
3. Engagement through social channels will be high
The
LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2020 reported that 75% of B2B buyers are
significantly influenced by social media and 84% of senior executives use
social media to support purchase decisions. LinkedIn has reported record
levels of engagement over the past year. Not only are social channels ideal for
informing and engaging but crucially, they’re perfect for listening, delivering
insight that can drive deeper levels of personalization within the customer
experience.
4. Clients will continue to value virtual face-to-face
interactions for meetings
While
virtual meetings are no replacement for a meeting ‘in person, they’re
close. Less formal than a face-to-face meeting in a traditional workplace
environment, they can accelerate professional relationships and help to quickly
build trust. Generally, it’s quicker to get a group of decision-makers together
virtually than in person, and any questions or concerns can be addressed
promptly. The McKinsey study found that 90% of B2B decision-makers expect the
remote and digital model to remain. Three in four believe the new model is as
effective or more so than before COVID-19. As we move forward, the B2B
customer experience will comprise a hybrid of face-to-face and remote
interactions.
5. Large events and summits will be augmented with
digital events and personalized digital demos
When
Mobile World Congress was postponed in February 2020 in the early stages of the
pandemic, it represented a turning point as live annual events moved online.
In-person B2B events are invaluable for brand presence, for networking, and
product demos, and we look forward to them returning. However, for the near
future, we see digital events and smaller in-person sessions augmented with
client conversations tightly focused on solving specific business challenges.
These conversations will be supplemented with personalized virtual product
demos which help clients visualize how they will use products and services
within their own businesses.
6. Zero-touch will remain an important part of the B2B
customer experience
We’ve
all experienced new contactless processes in our personal lives –virtual GP
consultations and digital forms completed during trips to the dentist and
optician, for example. Many of these processes are highly efficient and will
permanently replace manual processes, and the same is true for businesses.
We’re likely to see more contactless processes emerging – contactless employee
and visitor sign-in, for example, as well as booking of workspaces and meeting
rooms. Contactless issue resolution will become an increasing part of the B2B
customer experience. Businesses will use real-time data and analytics to make
life easier for clients, to identify issues, and solve them remotely before the
customer’s business is impacted. For example, our clients use a service called
Auto Ink which comes with some of our products – it means that we’re alerted
when clients’ ink supplies are running low in their meters, and we can ship ink
to them before their business is impacted.
7. Clients will expect emotional intelligence
Every individual has experienced the pandemic in a different way, and it has become
more important than ever to communicate and interact with sensitivity and
empathy. 68% of businesses in the Salesforce survey expect brands to
demonstrate empathy, but only 37% are experiencing this, while two-fifths of B2B
marketers have adapted content or creative materials to become more emotional.
Emotional intelligence has become one of the most critical skills during the
past year and will continue to be a valued and influential part of the B2B
customer experience.
Just as our personal buying experiences influence where we choose to shop, the B2B customer experience has become highly influential in buying decisions. 56% of B2B buyers have said they would actually pay more for a better customer experience. Conversely, they wouldn’t buy from the same business again if their experience was below expectations. While none of us knows what our newly emerging, the post-pandemic world really looks like, it’s down to all B2B organizations to act responsively, to respond quickly, to add real value, and to make every engagement matter.
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