How to Elevate Your Online Journey in B2B Digital Commerce

How to Understand Your Customers

 There's obviously a ton of value in doing customer surveys. When you encourage customers to share their experience and opinions through surveys, it's going to provide so much data and be able to make a huge impact on what you're doing to support them moving forward. Providing that insight not only will allow you to do a better job of improving customer satisfaction, but allows you to have a clear understanding of preferences and areas that you need to improve.

I think we often lose sight of the fact of how important social listening is. If you have an existing customer and their team is posting things that are important to them, being aware of that is important. I think in addition to that, as you are participating in conversations from a project manager's perspective, you hear things that they're asking you to do, like they may have requirements that they need you to support. If you hear conversations between team members about things that they're struggling with, it could be a lot of value in poking at those situations and seeing if there's an opportunity to support them beyond what they're asking for.

And I think that's empathy that we lose sight of because we are the “Experts”. If you were to practice empathy and really listen to someone, it makes such a difference in their day-to-day and what you're going to deliver for them versus just saying, “I'm the expert. I know best. I'm going to go ahead and move forward. You can tell me what you want, but at the end of the day, I'm going to tell you what makes sense.”

Online Experiences in B2B Commerce

The importance of online customer experience and B2B digital commerce cannot be overstated. We believe it impacts every aspect of business operations from sales and marketing to product development. There're a few areas that I'd highlight that I think make it so crucial.

One is obviously, probably the most simple and therefore most important is driving revenue growth. A compelling online customer experience is directly linked to revenue growth in B2B digital commerce. Companies that are excelling and delivering a consumer level online often seem improved sales outcomes because positive experience encourages repeat business and increases customer lifetime value.

The other area that I'd quickly highlight here is the impact it can have on a buyer journey. B2B customer experience encompasses the entire journey of a buyer from initial discovery through post-purchase support. This journey includes every interaction a customer has with a brand, whether it's through researching products, making purchases, receiving customer service. A seamless positive experience across that journey not only satisfies customers, but also builds long-term loyalty, which is critical for sustaining business relationships in the B2B commerce sector.

The decisions we often make for where we're going to go to make that next purchase, come back to the fact that we feel loyalty to that brand and that loyalty is usually built off the fact that we have had numerous positive experiences across our customer journeys.

Enhancing Digital Commerce Capabilities

One of my favorite stories to reference is a company called Neogen. They specialize in products and services dedicated to food and animal safety. They came to us looking to enhance their digital commerce capabilities. When they approached us, they had a goal of creating a unified onsite experience that was going to streamline their digital commerce operations and improve customer engagement.

Some of the key areas that they were looking to improve upon, enhancing their search functionality, of course, wanting to improve their user experience optimization, provide a better mobile experience, the opportunity to leverage technology around personalization.

Through those key areas that they have listed out we had some targets that we wanted to support them on. We wanted to see increased engagement through this effort with their existing customer base. We wanted to see higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction, and ultimately, we wanted to see their business grow.

Through all of the work we've done together over the course of many years, now, they have achieved all of those things in some capacity or another. We have a great case study on them. It's a great testament to excelling in B2B.