When we talk about B2B sales and marketing, with each client it is not just that you sell a product in bulk, but you also initiate a long-term relationship of mutual benefit as they assume the role of a wholesaler or a distributor for your business. Thus when we talk about B2B businesses, “the customer is the true king” and it is essential that whether it is offline sales or online, the approach of your platforms and resources must be customer-centric.
This especially becomes essential for your B2B e-commerce software solution as it is the future of the B2B business and as it is your virtual sales representative that has the highest potential of attracting and converting a potential lead into a long-term customer. While B2B e-commerce development is a onetime project for B2B e-commerce solution provider, to keep it relevant and customer-centric, it is essential that the platform is updated from time to time and new features and functionalities are introduced so that it can deliver delightful and satisfactory customer experiences and that it aligns with your business goals.
But, how do you determine which are the features or updates that will make your B2B e-commerce software solution customer-centric? To help you get those answers, the following are the strategies or approaches that you must employ.
Strategies and Approaches to make your B2B e-commerce software solution “Customer Centric”:
- Establish a Centre of Excellence:
Whether it is your IT team or your procurement team or your marketing team, each team and individual plays a vital role in your business and they all have insights and inputs that can help you make your B2B multi-vendor marketplace solution customer-centric.
Thus, to get their help in updating your e-commerce platform, you must establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) where a decision-maker from each department will participate and help you define an ideal technical architecture and UX of your e-commerce solutions. Ensure that you make periodic meetings and get insights from all so that you can deliver their insights as change requests to your B2B e-commerce solution provider.
- Periodic UI and UX Audits:
Technology domain is one of the most innovative industries in the world and if you do not keep yourself updated, then today’s revolution can easily become tomorrow’s legacy. Thus, to keep your e-commerce platform relevant and friendly for your customers, you must carry out periodic internal and external UX audits and make changes accordingly to the UI and UX of your B2B platform. In addition, if your eCommerce store have mobile app than you should employ compelling features that your customers expect amid COVID-19 to survive recent crisis.
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Integration:
Automation of mundane and unproductive tasks will not only make your resources more productive, they will have time to focus on significant tasks that can help you improve your sales and conversion rate and deliver better service to your customers. Also, when you employ Artificial Intelligence or Business Intelligence approaches, you can get dynamic user reports that can help you identify problems that you didn’t even know existed and help your decision-makers make an informed decision.
- Marketing Automation:
Although the scale of visitors and customers in a B2B business is much lesser than that of a B2C business, with marketing automation you can easily set a high benchmark in the market that can help you deliver individualized marketing efforts to each lead and that too at the right product at the right price and at the right time.
Right from solutions to issues like high bounce rate to shopping cart abandonment ratio, to increased sales prompt with effective up-selling and cross-selling strategies, with marketing automation you can better serve your customers and you can also equip your marketing and sales team with insights that can help them take customer-centric sales and marketing approaches.
With these strategies and approaches, not only will you stay updated and relevant to your customers, these customer-centric approaches will amplify your brand image and help you become a renowned and trusted brand that stays on top of minds of the customers.
