Accelerating B2B Digital Transformation with CX Analytics

Like many organizations, B2B companies have elevated digital transformation on their business agenda. Faced with rising expectations in a competitive landscape where much of the B2B decision-making process is now online, B2Bs realize they must quickly understand and address their customers’ needs across their digital journeys and deliver an exceptional eCommerce experience. But, while digital technologies are forcing B2B companies to rethink how they can best service their customers and adopt new ways of transforming their business, they often find themselves struggling to overcome B2B digital innovation challenges.

Challenges in B2B

As more and more millennials are now B2B buyers, B2B organizations need to better understand their needs and evolve their customer service capabilities to deliver more personalized, hassle-free online experiences that they have come to expect. This requires that B2B organizations uncover inefficiencies and acquire a deep understanding of their customer pain points to quickly find ways to alleviate friction and deliver the highest level of customer service possible. At the same time, B2B marketers are under pressure to increase marketing effectiveness and understand what offers, content, and services will engage key segments and deliver a substantial return on investment (ROI) across digital innovation efforts.

Complex B2B Processes

One of the biggest challenges B2B organizations face in digital innovation is the complexity of their business transactions -- where the typical B2B transaction is usually high volume and comprised of many different components in a single transaction. A good example that illustrates the intricacy of B2B business processes is automobile manufacturing, where car makers must source many unique parts – tires, hoses, batteries and electronics, etc. – that are often manufactured from numerous different vendors. The process encompasses seeking qualified supplies, requesting proposals, handling quotations, managing special pricing and advanced payment options, handling supply chain and order management, as well as administering customer service and support, and more. Digital transformation involves facilitating these B2B processes online in a very effective manner where operational efficiency is key to creating the superior customer experiences that B2B buyers expect.

Complex B2B processes offer a challenge in digital transformation

Requirement for data-driven insights

Success in B2B digital transformation boils down to data – and the ability to secure the right customer data and apply the necessary data analysis to truly understand customer behaviors and journeys to create more actionable insights that B2B companies can use to improve customer engagements and optimize experiences. By leveraging robust data analysis capabilities using CX analytics, B2B players can gain the insight needed to drive digital innovation across key areas of their business including process optimization, eCommerce site optimization and marketing effectiveness, allowing them to overcome constraints in the adoption of digital technologies. CX analytics have essentially become a B2B digital transformation imperative.

Driving B2B digital innovation

One of the important areas where CX analytics offers B2Bs invaluable capabilities is in process optimization. Given the complexity of B2B eCommerce transactions, B2B organizations have a heightened requirement to understand user behaviors to monitor and optimize critical business processes across their organization. Using CX analytics, B2B companies can measure the effectiveness of their individual online process steps and quickly identify and understand their customers’ online struggles in order to remove points of friction and provide an optimized experience across their entire business process. The ability to identify inefficiencies with the complete flow of processes also helps unite B2B teams in collaborative efforts around the digital innovation plan and offers B2B organizations the insight needed to uncover better ways to deliver optimized online solutions and services to their customers.

CX analytics also provides B2B companies valuable insight they can use for eCommerce site optimization and improving marketing effectiveness. By using behavior analysis in CX analytics, B2B organizations can understand customer behavior across their site – including engagement with page content and engagements before, during and after search functions – offering insights they can use to optimize their site and enhance search terms and functions. Struggle analytics can further assist by uncovering where and why customers struggle and offering the insights B2B companies need to rectify issues and optimize the customer experience across their entire site. B2B organizations can also use behavior analytics to analyze behavior patterns and identify customer paths, and then apply advanced segmentation to drill further into customer behavior, to gain the insight necessary to develop more impactful, personalized campaigns focused on customer wants and needs – and maximize marketing effectiveness to deliver a healthy ROI with digital transformation initiatives.

Addressing the right factors in digital innovation – and applying the power of CX analytics for data-driven insights -- helps B2B organizations overcome their digital transformation challenges and offers the agility to respond to evolving customer expectations to stay ahead of the competition. To get started with accelerating digital innovation using CX analytics, download “Customer Experience (CX) Analytics: A Digital Transformation Imperative” by clicking here.