Acquiring customers is usually the top priority when companies reflect on their growth and corporate goals. The after-sales phase, i.e. customer care and services after the order has been placed, is often neglected. For many retailers in both B2C and B2B environments, this includes any and all kinds of returns, whether they are returns due to revocation or other reasons. This attitude accepts the risk that negative experiences might even cause customers who are satisfied with their products to not shop at the store again. This may be manageable for individual private customers, but in the B2B sector, bad customer experiences weigh particularly heavily because order volumes are usually larger, and customer relationships are more long-term. When you consider the rule of thumb that two to three times as many resources need to be invested in winning new customers in comparison to satisfied regular customers, it quickly becomes clear that useful and powerful after-sales tools are of central importance for retailers who focus on B2B business.

Humanizing the B2B business

Shaped by the changes in private shopping experiences and supply chain problems in recent years, buyers in the B2B environment now also have higher expectations in regard to their supplier’s flexibility and support. The conclusion: B2B businesses must offer the same convenience and service as the B2C sector. Accordingly, it is recommended that buyers be perceived not only for their role in their company, but also as individual customers with expectations and desires. This should be reflected in the way communication with customers is conducted. As a general rule, it is advisable to keep the question “How can I help?” in mind. A solution-oriented approach and an open mind are two core elements that can positively deepen the customer relationship, even in the event of complaints, especially in after-sales.

Individualization in E-commerce reaches the B2B business

In principle, it can be said that B2B business is also becoming more fragmented. The purchasing behavior of customers is moving away from large, regular orders and towards on-demand orders. What remains the same, however, is the expectation of service and convenience, regardless of whether buyers place a large order every six months or place individual orders on demand. As a result, business with corporate customers in general is becoming more fragmented and the complexity of processes on the supplier side is multiplying. This dynamic is intensified by discrepancies in the processes before and after the purchase: Retailers who use digital convenience and good marketing to encourage customers to buy, but who do not have the digitized and streamlined processes to take advantage of economies of scale, feel the increasing pressure of the changes in B2B business already.

Very few B2B online shops are equipped for this new purchasing and returns behavior. Retailers are faced with the challenge of ensuring that their systems can handle this transformation. Despite all the changes, one critical aspect remains the same: Tolerance for poor experiences with retailers remains vanishingly low in the B2B sector, if it is at all present. Buyers have to answer to their superiors if delays or errors in deliveries occur. A failed order has consequences – from a delayed project start, to a production delay, to a new employee who cannot work on the first day because their laptop has not arrived yet.

New solutions cannot be found in old systems

In the B2B sector, many companies still rely on designated contacts for their corporate customers. This approach has been useful in the past as a way of balancing accessibility, efficiency and scalability. However, due to the increased fragmentation of orders and the growing complexity of processes, it is no longer possible to guarantee seamless, personalized support from dedicated contacts for corporate customers. As a result, B2B retailers suffer in terms of efficiency, and the additional workload reduces margins. Self-service tools play a key role in solving this problem: they create the much-needed capacity to meet the expectations of corporate customers.

Anticipating complexity: Helping customers to help themselves

With the increasing fragmentation and the associated process complexity, the customer service agents of B2B retailers find themselves in an unfavorable situation: ensuring customer satisfaction is becoming a challenge, as smaller and less regular order volumes place higher demands at the service level. While at the same time, navigating demanding customer relationships and a larger workload due to the regulatory and more complex payment processes typical for B2B business remains. This can only be addressed at the decision-maker level, because the processes of the entire after-sales-services would need to be adapted.

Automation could be the key to creating the capacities necessary to manage the changes in customer behavior. If customer service employees are inundated with all kinds of customer concerns after a purchase, from questions about the delivery status to complaints about production errors, while customers continue to place smaller orders increasingly on-demand, the workload in after-sales effectively increases – without any positive effects on the balance sheet.

Decision-makers who ignore this challenge or fail to recognize it at all are heading for an unpleasant situation. This is evident either in customer service through overburdened employees, or among the customers themselves through growing dissatisfaction. Both constellations are easier to prevent than to revise. The changes necessary can also be seen as an opportunity to implement several things at once: whether B2B or B2C business, returns and reimbursements used as a universal solution for all customer concerns should have been phased out long ago due to a lack of cost-effectiveness.