Over the course of its 25+ year existence, some aspects of ecommerce have changed dramatically: available products (remember when Amazon only sold books?), modes of payment, modes of shopping, inventory management, shipping practices and more.
But one aspect of ecommerce has remained remarkably the same over its existence. The “relationship” between seller and buyer. Why the quotation marks? Because while sellers and buyers know more about each other now (order histories, web behaviors, etc.), there’s still not what you could call a relationship in the way, say, a B2B sales rep has relationships with his accounts.
That’s about to change, though. With more B2B tools filtering into the ecommerce world (product configuration applications, self-service portals, automated customer journeys, and more), ecommerce retailers are moving into actual customer relationship management, and the benefits that come with.
The good news for ecommerce companies is that the customer management tools they need have already been “road tested” by B2B companies. And while some of the features in, say, an enterprise-level CRM system or a configure, price, quote solution may not be perfect fits for ecommerce, so many others are. Here are just a few.
Account creation
Most ecommerce sites require users to create an account, but that account is rarely more than a mailing address, a billing address, and a credit card number. By leveraging the account creation and management tools baked into a CPQ or CRM system, an ecommerce company can create a far more robust profile of each and every customer.
Creating a multi-step registration process can also help reduce fraud by giving ecommerce companies the opportunity to more carefully review accounts being created, and can also enable them to collect more actionable data for sending customer communications that drive more revenue.
Customer journeys
B2B marketing solutions also create the opportunity for an ecommerce concern to create more personalized customer experiences, and more effective customer journeys, leveraging traditional B2B tactics such as multi-stream nurture campaigns.
In the bricks and mortar world, a sales representative has the ability to draw out information from each prospect and ensure the proper steps are being taken to transform them from a lead to a customer. By creating customer journeys based on specific customer profiles and account data, an ecommerce company can, in effect, automate a sales rep’s work at a very granular level.
You might think, “Well, why don’t B2B companies automate the journey, too?” It typically boils down to dollar figures. In the enterprise sales world of six-, seven-, and even eight-figure deals, automation will help at the outset, but an experienced rep is almost always required to close the deal.
Segmented customer data
Segmentation of the audience has always been huge in ecommerce as it helps determine which buyers see which offers (e.g., you wouldn’t try and sell bungee-jumping supplies to 80-year-olds). And most ecommerce companies segment well, putting frequent buyers into a different category, for example, creating rewards clubs and other incentives.
B2B customer management tools empower ecommerce businesses with a few more arrows in the quiver, however, enabling them to tag customers for tiered pricing, allowing access to restricted web pages and files, and more.
The objective is two-fold: 1) empower customers with self-service mechanisms that put them in the driver’s seat, and 2) reduce impact on your own human resources and support teams, as those that are given the freedom to help themselves very often do just that. And drive more revenue in the process (so, ok, the objective is actually three-fold.)
The lines between B2C selling and B2B selling are getting blurrier by the day, but one thing is clear: it means improved ecommerce shopping experiences and increased ecommerce revenue.
