Creating a Better Sales Channel Customer Experience

Customer experience is king. Today’s customers expect a rewarding, personalized, and connected customer experience – one which many are failing to find in their B2B brand interactions. In fact, 71% of B2B customers report that they are considering jumping ship on their primary vendors due to a lack of engagement.

These shortcomings are far-reaching in B2B. If they apply to your company, there’s a good chance that they apply to your competitors as well. Investing in a customer-centric CX strategy and CX technology before they do, gives you a chance to capture market share and gain a competitive advantage in your sales channel.

Customer Centricity: Putting the Customer First

The basis of a successful CX strategy involves putting the customer’s needs first and finding way to improve customer experience across every phase of the customer journey – beginning with awareness and ending with advocacy. Today, this entails:

• Providing digital and mobile platforms where customers can interact with your brand, learn more about your products, and conduct independent research.
• Sharing engaging messages and promotional opportunities with customers across every touchpoint.
• Integrating customer data points across all platforms, so that you’re equipped to always provide support or promotions that are relevant to them.
• Packaging product knowledge training and education into interactive, bite-sized pieces, with opportunities to earn rewards.
• Using customer experience analytics and metrics to inform your CX strategy.
• Giving customers the chance to share feedback – and using that feedback to improve your loyalty marketing and customer support.
• Rewarding customers in meaningful ways when they take actions that help your brand – with incentives for growth and unique high value rewards for your top customers.
• Using customer purchase data and sales claims to construct special promotions, spot opportunities for re-engagement, and reach out with relevant offers for cross-sells, upsells, and product bundles.
• Incorporating elements of gamification into your customer rewards program to boost engagement.

CX Technology for Improving and Measuring Customer Experience

If after reading the list above, you think to yourself, “I don’t have the CX technology or customer experience analytics to do any of those things efficiently,” then the good news is that there are loyalty program software platforms that can do all of these things and measure the results. You can learn more about these platforms below:

• Performance Tracking – In addition to the ability to run personalized promotions, Performance Tracking facilitates and tracks sales claims submissions, purchase data, and verification.
• Learn-and-Earn – Through quizzes, trivia, and surveys, Learn-and-Earn helps you gather metrics for customer engagement, satisfaction, and even product knowledge!
• Mobile App – Giving customer the option to go mobile is a huge component of a good customer experience for the modern customer. Plus, customers will be more willing to engage with your brand and even share data when you make it convenient for them.
• Gamification – Gamification – the use of points, prizes, rewards, competitions, and unexpected bonuses – makes brand interactions more engaging, increases conversion, and is becoming a major component of effective CX strategy.
• Structure and Advanced Reporting – Proper segmentation is essential for providing, personalizing, and accurately measuring an awesome customer experience.
• CRM Integration – How can you possibly measure customer experience if you don’t have access to all of your data in one place? CRM Integration is an essential component of CX technology.
• Quick Points – Quick Points are a way to award reward point certificate customers – digitally or physically. Some of our clients even attach them to product manuals or packaging to inspire new customers to enroll in their loyalty program.
• Integration Services – As customer experience becomes increasingly digital, it’s important to focus on accessibility and convenience with single-sign on for all of your web-based platforms.
• Communications – Consistent, effective communication should be a focal point for your CX strategy. Loyalty program communication tools give you the ability to provide engaging communication across a variety of channels, according to customer preference.
• Online Reward Catalog – Make sure you are providing an exceptional customer experience even after the points of sale. Try giving your customers the ability to create wishlists and use their rewards points towards millions of rewards on a B2C-style rewards catalog!

Types of Customer Rewards for Deepening Loyalty

After putting in all this effort to improve your customer experience, you need to find ways to positively reinforce the customer journey! This is where customer rewards tie into your CX strategy. It’s important to choose rewards that match your participant’s lifestyle and scale to provide value to different segments of your audience.

For instance, you need easily-attainable rewards to drive incremental growth with new buyers and part-time customers, all the way to exclusive rewards and incentive travel opportunities to build loyalty with top customers.

Which of these types of rewards do you think will provide the best experience for your customers, while targeting your organizational goals?

• Merchandise Rewards – Online points programs rewards are perfect for motivating a wide range of customers with varying levels of performance.
• Debit Card Rewards – Debit card rewards are fast and convenient, at the expense of emotional connection. They are best suited for rebate programs, SPIFFs, or e-commerce platforms.
• Gift Card Incentives – Gift card incentives have the convenience of debit card rewards, but with more options for personalization for a more curated reward experience.
• Group Incentive Travel – Incentive travel is the most memorable and emotionally impactful customer reward – perfect for building loyalty and advocacy with your most important customers.

Build a CX Strategy That Delights Your Customers

Hopefully, this article gave you some insights into what customers expect and some ideas for how you can improve your customer experience. In addition to our CX technology, we would love to work with you to build and end-to-end customer loyalty plan that includes platforms for engaging your customers, tools for measuring your customer experience analytics, and program management to ensure an ROI for your loyalty program!