Customer servicing vs. customer service: Getting it right
Customer servicing is the job of an entire organization, not confined to a single department. It's about truly solving customer problems.
When things get tough, customers need businesses to help them. This is, of course, the role of customer service – and it’s no secret that you can improve customer loyalty (and thereby the success of your company), by offering excellent service.
And to a business navigating the stormy waters of today’s economic environment, the importance of customer service to a safe passage cannot be underestimated. Service should act as a shield for the brand, protecting it from disruption by helping customers when things get difficult.
Despite all this, in B2B customer service there’s a problem: a gap between what organizations want to achieve with service, what their customers expect, and what they’re actually achieving.
Playing catch-up: B2B customer service
A survey by the Harvard Business Review Analytics Service found 94% of B2B leaders regard service as critical to business success. But only 58% of them are satisfied with the service their organization provides.
That’s 42% who think the service they provide isn’t good enough. The gap is huge, and it’s a gap that may well have been caused by an historic lack of investment, a problem that’s dogged service for decades.
This problem is about to made worse by economic and geopolitical pressures forcing organizations to make tough spending choices.
The trouble is, B2B customer service still lags behind B2C service.
Investment is increasing, but it’s taken a lot longer to catch up, and with so many different pressures on organizations of all sizes it’s a tough sell to keep it up. Today, B2B customers expect the same kind of experiences they get as consumers.
And what’s required to close that gap between expectation and reality, to deliver the kind of service that pleases customers, is constantly evolving. But here are some steps to start with:
- Move from a tactical to a strategic approach
- Improve the agent experience
- Work towards proactive service
Utilities can get service right + see satisfaction soar as a result.
The real-life examples are HERE.
Customer service strategy for B2B success
While incremental improvements are useful and make a difference, by themselves they won’t build a service operation that will ride out future storms. That requires a strategic approach, in which customer service becomes a business unit – one that earns money and protects the brand.
The HBR Analytics Service report says that this is about more than adding some new technology. B2B organizations need to move beyond a tactical approach.
“It’s not about just adding a self-service channel or chatbot or applying automation tools to deliver service more efficiently,” the report states.
“Instead, businesses need to plan for a strategic shift that impacts the entire way the service function operates, both in the service organization itself and across the enterprise.”
That is, in itself, a more efficient way of running customer service. Any organization placing service at its heart by fully incorporating it into the business creates a service operation that’s better at helping customers.
Issues are resolved faster and with better outcomes, leaving agents with time to help more people. Costs decrease because issues are solved (and solved faster), staff are happier and stay in their jobs, and customers remain loyal.
Customer service priorities: Bye-bye silos, hello growth
Delivering the stellar service that protects a brand, increases customer lifetime value, and supports new business models requires a new approach.
Improve the service agent experience
Yet there are plenty of ways to improve the situation just by getting better at what you already do. Improving efficiency matters hugely, and efficiency gains can be incremental: sometimes it’s the small things that can make a big difference, especially when it comes to improving how people work.
One of those apparently small things is the way in which agents look for and find information.
In a global survey of 859 businesses from a variety of industries and sizes, Aberdeen Strategy & Research found that employees spent 13% of their time looking for the information they need to do their jobs.
By reducing the time spent searching for answers in a service environment, you’ve immediately made the business more efficient, given employees more time to do their actual jobs and sped up the resolution for the customer.
An AI-powered knowledge base, which instantly puts an entire organization’s worth of information at their disposal, makes it easy to find what they’re looking for. Automation then helps them make the right decision about what to do next.
Using all the data an organization holds on a customer builds a complete profile, which helps the agent understand the customer’s history with the business. And giving agents access to expertise across the entire organization helps them solve problems faster. The result is employees with more time to do a better job and more customers served.
Better than good: Making customer service the best-ever experience
Make your customer service experiences more than "meh" and watch loyalty soar.
Moving beyond reactive mode
Customer service is reactive by nature. When things go wrong or equipment fails, customers call for service. But leading B2B companies realize that service needs to go beyond reacting to customer calls.
Aberdeen’s study found that best-in-class B2B service organizations are 14% more likely to use automated alerts and notifications to proactively engage customers about things like delays in parts delivery or a machine part that’s due to be replaced.
This kind of proactive service helps reduce customer downtime and frustration, and elevates service beyond trouble-shooting to the role of a trusted partner. Service itself is now a product and a revenue stream – you don’t just sell a machine, you sell a package of support, spares, assistance and advice.
In the HBR survey, 75% of respondents rated proactive service as important, but only 36% can currently deliver it. 52% said they plan to invest in proactive capabilities over the next two years.
B2B firms are using monitoring, AI, machine learning, and analytics to help them take a more proactive approach to service.
The future of service resolution: End-to-end, automated case flows
Learn how service resolution is improved through automated case flow creation that orchestrates diagnosis, troubleshooting, logistics, and field service operations.
Be there for your customers
Service is one of the most useful tools an organization has to deal with uncertainty and disruption. By delivering fast, empathetic service, brands can shape customer perception and build lifetime loyalty.
In B2B, when it’s people’s livelihoods on the line, service can make the difference between failure and success.
