B2B consumerization is today – Don’t get left behind.

In this “Age of the Customer”, as Forrester has labeled it – buyers are more empowered than ever before. B2B companies have the biggest challenge in adapting as transparent pricing and omni-channel has quickly become the norm, and the B2B buyer expectations are being set not just by the status quo but by direct competitors as well as best of breed companies raising the bar on customer interactions and experiences.

Our B2B clients are working to keep ahead of these customer expectations – as buyers want to quickly find what they are looking for at the best value, all at a click of a mouse but supported by self-service guided selling tools that take into account complex configurations, options, and educational content or they want the option to call their account manager for help. According to Forrester, almost 60% of B2B buyers prefer to not interact with sales reps but instead want more self-service options.

Keeping up with this level of expectation means increasingly rethinking your cross channel selling strategy – how do your account managers complement self-service ecommerce?  How do you scale as you fold in an increasingly complex rules engine, manage static segments and manually targeted content given catalogs are getting bigger, more complex with intricate account – specific pricing and availability. Within an ecommerce experience if you change the check-out workflow, key marketing messages or product page layout these may all effect how a customer interacts and ultimately finalizes their order (with or without the account manager).   Defining an initial strategy, combining company insights, along with B2B and commerce best practices with a test & learn approach ultimately allows for optimization of revenue driving metrics like Average Order Value (AOV) and Conversion.   

Personalization can play a key role in automating and testing these processes, with our most successful B2B clients we have been able to drastically minimize the need for complex rule sets freeing up time for strategic initiatives and driving top line revenue. 

If you are interested in learning more about how we can help your B2B company, please contact RichRelevance for an initial assessment and demo.