B2B buyers expect a smooth CX, but many businesses need help to meet these expectations. The result is buyer frustration and disappointment that often leads to churn.
The solution is to develop a customer journey mapping process that focuses the attention of all company departments on improving the customer experience.
Identifying Pain Points
You’ve probably encountered pain points in your life- road work that causes a traffic jam, a store that doesn’t have enough cash registers- and felt frustrated. When customers experience these frustrations with a company, they may leave despite their loyalty to the brand. In a crowded market where products have become commoditized, customer experience is now the paramount factor that attracts and retains business.
To understand the types of pain your customers experience, study your data. Look at your website performance, sales records, and chats with customer support to learn what customers are telling you about their experience with your brand.
Another way to identify pain points is by asking your customers open-ended questions during surveys or interviews. This will help you identify specific areas of pain and will provide you with a better understanding of what needs to be improved. It’s important to note that all company departments should take part in identifying pain points. This ensures everyone is on the same page and that the company works cohesively.
Creating a Recommendation Engine for Prospects
Investing in B2B customer journey mapping can help your team develop an end-to-end view of what customers encounter when they engage with your brand. It is a valuable exercise that often yields unexpected results and should be embraced by all departments, including marketing, sales, support, IT, and operations.
For example, a common challenge new customers face is “product overwhelm.” You can overcome this by delivering educational content to educate them on your product’s features. This will make them more confident in their decision to purchase and show that you’re committed to their success.
Increasing customer retention is one of the best ways to improve lifetime value (LCV). It measures how much profit a company can expect from a specific customer throughout their relationship with your business. Loyal customers are also more likely to refer other companies to your services, resulting in a significant new revenue source. LCV metrics can help you identify customer segments and tailor products, services, and engagement to their needs. This can be accomplished with a tactical or strategic B2B customer journey map, both practical tools for improving customer retention and satisfaction.
Developing a Recommendation Engine
A B2B customer journey map gives businesses an in-depth understanding of their customers, including their needs and emotions. This information can improve products and services and increase customer retention.
Creating a B2B customer journey map involves identifying all touchpoints that customers interact with during the lifecycle, from awareness through purchase and use to renewal and advocacy. The process also includes determining what steps are needed to reach each milestone and how these steps can be improved.
The awareness stage is where a business introduces its brand to potential customers. This step is often the most difficult, as companies must make a persuasive case that their product or service will solve a problem and generate ROI. The consideration stage is where buyers research options and ask questions. During this stage, vendors must stay in touch by sending price quotes and providing information about their solutions.
Once a buyer decides to purchase, the business must provide excellent support and service to ensure a positive customer experience. This can be done through email, phone, or live chat.
Creating a Recommendation Engine
Typically, recommendation engines are hosted as a separate service and communicate with web applications through Application Programming Interfaces. This integration transforms the system into a component of your website or other software so you can use it to deliver real-time recommendations to your audience.
In the B2B space, content is critical to educating buyers and moving them further down your conversion funnel. This can include white papers, case studies, webinars, product information, and sales presentations.
Once a prospect becomes an existing customer, you must keep them engaged with your brand and nurture a relationship that builds trust and loyalty. This requires easy access to content, a good relationship with sales reps, and continued support.
For this reason, your recommendation engine must continue to adapt and improve over time. This means regular monitoring and analyzing your results, as well as regularly adding new data and trying out different models. This will ensure that your recommendation engine is always working at its best.
Creating a Recommendation Engine for Existing Customers
B2B customers often take long to purchase and implement a product or service. They often consult with colleagues and consultants, attend webinars, or watch product demos before deciding.
Creating a recommendation engine for existing customers is essential to improving customer retention. This can be done by giving them a personalized experience based on their buying history and preferences. This can help them find and easily access the correct information and solutions to meet their business needs.
Another critical aspect of ensuring customer retention is providing excellent support throughout the product or service’s lifetime. This can be done by providing timely and relevant feedback and ensuring that the product or service is easy to use and delivers on its promises.
In addition, businesses should also consider ways to improve customer advocacy by encouraging their existing customers to promote their products and services. By doing so, they can increase the number of potential buyers and increase their retention rates. The benefits of this approach are clear: increased revenue, decreased operating costs, and more satisfied customers.
