11 Ways B2B Software Increases Customer Service

Whatever industry or vertical B2B companies serve, one of the foundational goals is to provide great customer service and build a loyal following. In this digital era, most people prefer to research and purchase products and services online. They prefer doing business remotely through email correspondence, online access to business systems, mobile apps and other digital avenues.

Overall, customers expect their B2B eCommerce experience to be as easy as shopping anywhere online. Some of the components they expect to have at their fingertips include personalized and mobile first websites and apps that integrate with social channels. Furthermore, they expect to be able to search for a product and find it quickly through efficient and intuitive site search.

B2B Commerce software helps business deliver feature rich digital customer service, enabling companies to realize the goal of acquiring, selling, and retaining customers and developing brand loyalty.

Here are eleven ways ecommerce software can help enhance your B2B customer service:

Customer Groups: B2B companies specialize in large orders that vary from customer to customer. Commerce software feature the ability to create segmented client lists. Business can group their customers based on similarities such as geographical location, order volume, catalog selection, etc., streamlining both inventory and marketing processes.
Access to authorized users only: In many cases, B2B businesses want restricted access for users, allowing only the pre-registered client to access specific product, catalog and content features. ECommerce software facilitates this through a robust role-based security feature.
Customer Specific Products and Pricing: B2B commerce software contains customer-specific product and pricing features, which helps B2B businesses to differentiate product pricing and customer specific catalogs based on customer groups.
Minimum and Maximum Order Quantity Value: Commerce software helps B2B companies set min-max quantity of product, maximum order amount, and specify quantity in multiples for product sold. This fulfills one of the key requirements B2B companies utilize when structuring pricing for their customers.
Site Search. Internal site search of ecommerce platforms enables customers to access to their products and content very quickly. B2B commerce search comes up with features like partial search, did you mean, filters and relevance ranking which helps customers to find their data quickly and easily.
Quick Order: Many B2B customers, especially repeat customers, know exactly what they want to purchase, right down to the item number or SKU. Quick order enables customers to enter item numbers and quantities and to quickly add items to their cart without searching or browsing.
Personalized Dashboard: The logged-in users of a B2B ecommerce site are able to use a personalized dashboard that features all of their activities on the website, including order management, reorder, accounting, profile management, returns, quoted items, shopping list, purchase reports, invoice details and tax exemption through the My Account - Dashboard feature.
Mobile Support. Commerce software enables B2B mobile users to interact and purchase from any device, regardless of their device or operating system. In this mobile first digital world, this flexibility and ease of use goes a long way towards building loyal B2B customers.

9. Flexible Payments Options. Most B2B companies have ongoing and long-term relationships with their customers, who place repeat orders. In the B2B business environment, not every order can or should have the payment processed online at the end of each order. To accommodate these needs, ecommerce software supports configuring multiple payment options like purchase orders, corporate accounts, Net 30 (60 or 90), checks and more.

Request a quote. Some B2B orders or products are complicated to quote a price. An ecommerce site can enable customers to submit a request for a quote. This feature streamlines both the internal workflow for the B2B company and helps the customer place their specialized request at their convenience.
Auto email correspondence. Auto email correspondence helps B2B companies to deliver relevant data to their customers inbox, enabling them to complete correspondence without accessing the commerce portal. Some of the auto email correspondence commerce software features include registration, password change, order submitted and order status updates.

In summary, B2B ecommerce software can be very helpful to B2B companies. In addition to helping deliver great customer service, it can also help create efficiencies within the B2B company workflow. Please continue to read our series “How B2B Commerce Software Can Help Businesses” from B2B eCommerce Expert, Mamta Agrawal. To learn more about XCentium’s Commerce services, please visit our Commerce pages.