4 Significant Changes to Enhance The B2B Client Experience
Key points
- Linked Helper improved customer feedback collection by using a form in their app, resulting in valuable insights and UI enhancements based on customer reviews.
- ReviewGrower engaged with a software company facing negative press by facilitating brainstorming sessions and crafting a reputation-recovery plan together, leading to a 35% increase in positive public sentiment.
- Digital Triggers utilized advanced data analytics to identify and resolve SEO issues for a B2B client, resulting in a 35% improvement in organic traffic and stronger client relationships through proactive efforts.
Everyone is wondering not only how to manage client relationships, but also how to go above and beyond in order to deliver the best B2B client experience. The result will be a relationship forged so deeply that your customers will remember you for a long time—and they’ll stay loyal, too.
B2B companies are a different beast when it comes to relationship building. Their customer journey is wildly different from their B2C counterparts. After all, they are looking to make money. If your business is already customer-centric, that’s great news. But how much energy are you putting in improving the B2B customer experience? If you’ve noticed B2B brands recently churning, something might not be quite right.
Let’s look at a few real-world B2B customer experience examples and best practices based on interviews with business leaders from around the globe.
Implementing a feedback collection form
Collecting customer feedback seems like a no-brainer, but finding the best time and asking the right amount of questions isn’t that easy. After all, you want to collect enough information to improve your product or service without overwhelming your B2B buyers.
According to Daria Erina, Managing Director at Linked Helper, they’ve always had a big focus on the B2B space. Some of their best clients are lead generation agencies, marketing, advertising, and recruitment companies. In their early days, the company was able to have many direct conversations in order to check up on the customer satisfaction. But once the business grew, it was no longer feasible.
As Linked Helper grew to over 30,000 users, they needed to overhaul their way of connecting with their customers. The solution: implementing a feedback collection form that appears in the app after three weeks of use. Users can rate the product on a five-star scale and list pros and cons. This approach has revealed some key insights, for instance, out of the 1,000 most recent reviews, 90 cited poor UI as a significant drawback.
One memorable comment was, “Using your app is as difficult as managing a nuclear plant.” This led us to invest in a six-month project to overhaul the look and feel of our application. We launched the updated version in early 2023, making it more straightforward and intuitive. Several major clients have since noted that our UI is now much easier to use.
Shifting to collaborative problem-solving
Great customer experience isn’t always linked to the pains of a growing company. Sometimes, you simply come across a customer who really needs your help. That was the case with ReviewGrower, as Co-Founder Alexandru Contes details. They were approached by a software company that was dealing with negative press.
Most companies would’ve referred them to their FAQ or blog posts, but instead of doing that, the ReviewGrower facilitated a series of brainstorming sessions with the client’s team. The idea was to understand their perspective, aligning our goals, and crafting a reputation-recovery plan together.
After implementing this approach, we saw a 35% increase in their positive public sentiment within six months. This was a significant uptick compared to our past methods. Thus, engaging our B2B clients as partners, rather than customers, has improved our effectiveness substantially.
Becoming proactive with issue resolution
It’s said that companies that are proactive have an edge over their competitors. But how do they actually achieve that success? According to research published by Harald Brege and Daniel Kindström, most companies are already (highly) proactive when it comes to their customer relationships, but also competitors and innovation. The result was that a mix of all three is what brings success when it comes to being proactive.
Grow your industry knowledge
One important aspect of proactivity could be the data at your disposal. Joe Troyer, CEO and Growth Advisor at Digital Triggers, mentioned how they’ve transitioned to a model of proactive issue resolution. While working with a B2B client who was dealing with their SEO performance, they didn’t wait for the client to raise an issue. Instead, Digital Trigger’s advanced data analytics alerted them early. This allowed the company to tackle the problem early and solve underlying issues quickly.
This preemptive strike led to an impressive 35% improvement in their organic traffic within three months. The gratitude expressed by our client for our proactive efforts underscored the value of our new approach to forging stronger relationships.
Overhauling & customizing onboarding practices
Good onboarding is one of the most important customer experience best practices every company should follow. But many businesses build a process that works when they are young, and only have a handful of clients. Once they grow, they still rely on those outdated processes they’ve set up, forgetting that customer needs have changed over time.
Denise Hemke, Chief Product Officer at Checkr, shares this opinion. According to Denise, you have to go back and tailor the onboarding practices to each market. Whether you're working across niches, geographies, or client sizes—keep their particular details in mind.
This is why we’ve built what we call onboarding forms at Service Provider Pro. They can be assigned to individual customers, making it easier for your team to target specific client groups.
It’s much different if your point-of-contact is the CEO of a small firm versus dealing with a VP or executive in a larger firm. The onboarding discussion will be different too—keep that in mind and you’ll see those early months of customer satisfaction rise even faster.
Conclusion
From rethinking your onboarding flow to becoming more proactive, there are many ways to provide good customer experiences. Modern companies collect many different data points, so it should be easier than ever to figure out how each part of your team can help you improve the client experience.