How to enhance the customer experience in a B2b customer portal?

"Our primary concern is customer's satisfaction". This is what every business says. It doesn't matter which sector are you working in, the ultimate goal of everything you do is to increase business revenue and increase the level of customer satisfaction.

Businesses take care of customer experience and enhance it through different attempts. If you are still following the old sales funnel, it is high time to adopt the new technologies. Now, web development company takes care of unique features for next-generation website development for users.

Google gets more than 2 trillion searches every day. It has become very common to search for anything and everything on Google. It is not a case anymore that B2B businesses follow traditional old methods to get customers and retain them.

We all know how difficult it is to get good leads. The companies spend a lot of amount in the sales department and digital marketing campaigns. Since a huge percent of the total budget is spent on marketing and lead generation, it is extremely essential to retain existing customers.

Most of the organizations fail to concentrate on existing customers and end up in losing potential clients. In b2b businesses, organizations generally have a myth that customers retain without any efforts.

B2c businesses deal with end users of products or services. They directly interact with consumers. Hence these organizations pay attention to customer experience. But b2b businesses deal with other businesses.

When one business supply certain raw materials or services to another business, that another business is called the customer. For instance, there is an organization of glass manufacturing.

It can deal with various other businesses like furniture manufacturers, construction companies, or even automobile companies. These are nothing but customers of the glass manufacturing company.

In this article, we are going to discuss b2b customer portal and how to develop an efficient portal to improve customer experience.

Information

The first thing to consider while developing a b2b customer portal is to offer complete information. Most of the customers prefer calling businesses to get certain information.

This information can be about products, services, date of delivery, price inquiries, and much more. More than 50 percent of businesses prefer self-service web portals to get information. Though calling can answer all the questions, businesses should take help of calling only for unique queries.

All the common information can be accessed from web portals. Customers should be able to get complete information on the portal. It enhances the customer experience since the minute details are available on portals.

By information we mean not only business information but also product information. The portal must display the list of products and the quality standards of those products. It helps a customer understands what are the products and to decide whether to buy those materials or not.

Easy order management

One more benefit of b2b customer portal is that it offers easy order management. The order management of b2b industry is complex and time-consuming.

What does order management mean? Whenever a customer puts an order of raw material, machinery, etc., Various steps get involved in the process. Customers should be able to put an order through the portal.

Once the order is received businesses keep updating about the progress on the portal. A customer can track the order processing and can also track order delivery.

Since the portal shows complete information customer can see if the products are available in the stock or not.

Transparency in costing

Many customers worry about higher prices of materials or types of machinery. B2B customer portal can offer transparency in pricing so that customers can review what are the standard prices.

In this way, businesses can avoid price negotiation. Once the prices are clear, customers can proceed further.

Maintenance of machinery

The customer portal can be customized. Developers can offer different information to different customers. Whenever customers purchase machinery, they must be informed about the periodic maintenance of those machines.

You being a manufacturer of machinery should inform customers about maintenance cycles. With B2B customer portal, you need not call each and every customer to inform their machine maintenance cycles. This feature enhances customer experience.

Messaging

A best B2B portal offers easy messaging facilities. Customers should be able to interact with businesses through a chat feature. While developing a B2B customer portal you should add this messaging feature. Many times calling can be complex and inconvenient.

In such scenarios, customers should be able to message businesses in real time. While designing a messaging feature make sure that you keep it simple and easy to understand. Customers should not find it difficult to message businesses.

Easy payments

Why wait for cheques and cash transactions? The old school methods of payment are time-consuming. Since online payment modes are becoming popular, developers should integrate this feature into the B2B customer portal.

By allowing customers to pay online you can easily track the payments and maintain your balance sheet with a hassle-free process. You can allow different modes of payment such as credit cards, debit cards, e-wallets, net banking, etc.

Customer data

The biggest benefit of B2B customer portal is that businesses can collect important customer data easily. Whenever the customer signs up to a customer portal, the portal asks for certain details which can be used later by the marketing team.

Feedback

In any business customer feedback is necessary. B2B customer portal should allow customers to offer their valuable feedback about the products and services.

With the help of this feedback details, businesses can strategize and improve their working ethics. Make sure the feedback is displayed on the portal so that other customers can refer it.

Conclusion

Businesses are taking help of technology to engage customer experience. The b2b industry is in no mood to stay back and follow old methods.

Businesses dealing with other businesses should hire professional b2b customer portal developers to get a perfect portal. By outsourcing portal development, you can get best quality portal in a cost-efficient way.

My name is Hemendra Singh. I am Managing Director and Co-Founder of The NineHertz, a Mobile App Development Company. My ideology is that, a clear vision and hard work builds a great company.