Increasingly, companies are moving away from a price-led approach in favour of a value-led strategy. One that puts the focus on customer experience. Retaining customers and growing brand awareness are mounting challenges for B2B businesses.
According to customer intelligence consultancy firm Walker Info, by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, says Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare for IoT Now.
Communications technology has a vital role to play in improving customer experience and in enabling growth. It is imperative that organisations adopt the technologies and trends that will future-proof their businesses. Recent research from Ovum and TeleWare revealed that over 60% of organisations see changing customer behaviour as a key challenge to managing customer relationships. Whilst almost 50% list “improving customer experience” as one of their top three priorities for 2016.
Be available
Customers are now using more digital channels than ever before to contact companies. This is supported by a recent report from Accenture and SAP hybris, that 65% of B2B buyers reported an increase in total spend online in 2015. This isn’t simply limited to just digital channels, however, as 32% of business purchasers’ mix online and offline channels. This means that customers have an increasing number of touch-points and experiences with the same business.
With omnichannel customer experience offerings, organisations now have more business critical information at their fingertips than ever before. This presents a huge opportunity. We are now able to improve customer experience with real time information provided through all the channels open to us. It also provides an opportunity to differentiate from the competition by being available and joined up. According to Deloitte 92% of organisations that view customer experience as a differentiator offer multiple contact channels. But how will this change or evolve over the next five years?
Just as the past decade has shown technology to be the major force in changing customer expectations, we can safely assume that new and improved technologies will drive further changes. Predictive analytics is already helping businesses to improve productivity, meet governance and compliance requirements and improve customer experience. This technology is set to become even more sophisticated. As Forrester describes it, “predictive analytics is a key capability to make better decisions, avoid risks, and create differentiated, more individualised customer experiences.”
Satisfaction analytics
Telecoms technology is adapting rapidly to the changing landscape. Speech recognition, voice sentiment analysis, video chat and voice biometrics are becoming commonplace. More traditional tools like interactive voice response, IVR, will be updated. Companies are finding huge value in scientifically measuring and optimising the customer experience to maximise satisfaction. Increasing satisfaction through customer experience analytics and insight can drive measurable revenue increases.
Common gripes
Customers in the B2B space cite long and complex forms, delivery issues, and irrelevant recommendations alongside content that is hard to find as common grievances. Accurate, joined-up data is critical to providing behavioural, predictive and personalised customer experiences. This way the customer remains at the heart of everything.
Future relationships
TeleWare is excited for the future, and for what it means for customers who understand the need to provide outstanding customer experience. By investing in creating more personalised experiences that demonstrate that the business understand their customers, they create opportunities to differentiate from their competitors and increase business profitability.
We have a rich history of providing communication technology that is designed and built in-house that have improved how businesses communicate with their customers for the past 25 years. However, we are always looking to the future and we are investing more resource and budget than ever to continue to create products and services that will continue to provide competitive advantage for those businesses using TeleWare products.
Our recent launch of Skype For Business call recording, IVR and voicemail provides businesses with the ability to fully integrate Skype for Business into their communication infrastructure whilst maintaining functionality expected with fixed line or mobile communications. In addition, our new Skype for Business recording is also compliant with FCA and Dodd Frank regulations.
The author of this blog is Steve Haworth, CEO of TeleWare for IoT Now
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