Your customers expect you to have a B2B self-service portal, which is the ultimate reason. It’s simply necessary to meet customer requirements; it’s no longer even considered a “good to have.”
According to the Harvard Business Review, 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative – Source
Customers don’t like to wait for answers to their questions, and they certainly don’t like to have to spend more time being transferred between customer support representatives.
All of these problems will be solved and your consumers’ expectations will be met if you offer a self-service alternative.
Your customers will have a better overall experience and be better able to utilize your goods and services to their utmost potential as a result.
What is a B2B Self-Service Portal?
Source: Objectedge
A self-service portal is a website that provides tools and knowledge to assist users in finding solutions to their problems without having to speak with a customer support representative.
In the B2B sector, offering your customers access to a customer self-service portal is very beneficial since it gives them the authority to take care of themselves. As a result, the success of your customer service depends on offering a self-service B2B portal. Your customers can get onboarded with how your product works, download resources, file support issues, find solutions to their own questions, and more with a customer self-service portal.
A self-service portal should never be considered by a B2B company as an alternative to traditional customer care. Instead, a self-help portal should be a component of a bigger customer service plan that enables a smooth cross-channel interaction.
B2B self-service educates and empowers customers by giving them the knowledge and resources they need to handle many common problems on their own. This is, in contrast, to merely tell them what to do.
Common B2B self-services include:
- Incident management online (Loss of delivery, defective item)
- Management of returns
- Delivery status
- Follow-up with online queries from the sales team, customer service, etc.
- Service booking management
- Knowledge base or blog pages and FAQs
- Product information
- Download bills, security alerts, user guides, or warranty documents
- Provide Feedback
Let us now look at a few Benefits of the B2B Self Service Portal which will enlighten you with the necessary changes and help enhance your customer service.
Benefits of Implementing B2B customer service portal
A B2B self-serve portal comes helps your business grow in so many ways. The following are the benefits you get by implementing a self-serve portal in your B2B business-
1. Cost Reduction
A customer self-service B2B portal can significantly reduce support expenses. Customers are more likely to choose that alternative when they have the resources to do so on their own. Your support tickets consequently decline as a result.
You can use the strength of crowd-based help by integrating a peer-to-peer support group into your customer self-service approach. As a result, your team will spend less time responding to customer inquiries because your other customers will do it instead.
2. Faster Service
Customers in the B2B market want the buying process to go as swiftly and easily as feasible. They gain from easy-to-use search options, precise and individualized product information, and self-services like online bookings to appointments and other services.
Self-services lessen the administrative strain on the customer and enable them to continue using their current internal procedures.
70% reductions in the call, chat, and/or email inquiries after implementing a Virtual Customer Assistant, according to Gartner research. – Source
B2B customers don’t want to be dependent on an agent’s availability, or your customer care team’s hours. Because customers look for around-the-clock flawless services, making positive online experiences valuable and essential.
3. Reduce Customer Churn Rate
Customers will do practically anything to avoid speaking with you or any of your customer service people. Customers simply don’t want to talk to you or any of your customer service professionals and be on hold for hours.
If you don’t give them options to solve problems themselves, they can decide to go with one of your competitors who do.
4. Self-Help Option
Customers’ expectations are arguably the main justification for having a customer self-service portal.
No B2B company should ever think about using a self-service portal in place of conventional customer care. Instead, a self-help portal should be a component of a bigger customer service plan that enables a smooth cross-channel interaction.
B2B self-service portals educate and empower clients by giving them the knowledge and resources they need to handle many common problems on their own. This is, in contrast, to merely tell them what to do.
Hence, your clients will have a better overall experience and will be able to utilize your services to their utmost potential.
5. Improve Customer Satisfaction
Customer experience refers to the interaction a customer has with a business, including their perception of your service and previous interactions. Increased engagement, increased brand loyalty, and increased customer retention are all results of good customer experiences.
Self-Serve portals provide a level of freedom and convenience, hence offering a unique customer experience tailored to the requirement of each individual. As a result, it’s likely that self-service for your clients will enhance their overall experience.
6. FAQs to the rescue
In customer service, FAQs are typically seen as a “first line of defense.” They address the common concerns customers have about your specific goods, services, company, reputation, and policies.
91% of customers say they would use a knowledge base if it met their needs. – Source
FAQs help customers feel more at ease, make your policies transparent, and respond to their inquiries without the need for tickets or live representatives.
Your customers can find quick remedies with relevant FAQs to search and land with solutions that make their customer service journey easy yet memorable.
How to optimize self-service portals for better customer satisfaction?
Source: Kapture
One must surely agree that it isn’t easy to impress any B2B client. B2B customers can have particular requirements and expect a lot of attention. It takes a lot of work and preparation to provide a flawless online self-service experience.
Keeping the following points in mind will enable you to efficiently optimize your self-service portal:
1. Provide Sufficient and updated Information
Any questions a customer may have about the products themselves or the entire purchasing process should be able to be answered in a centralized knowledge base.
This ought to include detailed product catalogs with specifications, articles, videos, how-to manuals for using things, and more.
Learning is a never-ending process and so it is important to keep the content about any new thing going on with your product on the self-serve portal.
Removing the old and irrelevant content is equally as important as updating the new one. You need to make sure that everything in your knowledge base is new and fresh.
2. Focus on Speed and Simplicity
Customers choose self-service looking for speed, thus when B2B companies want to offer self-service capability, speed must be taken into account. For a quicker, more convenient online experience, customer-facing systems, and processes should be streamlined and optimized.
The sole reason for customers to run away from reaching out to your customer support and need a self-serve portal is to get their queries answered with a click and save their time.
3. Provide Administrative Functionality
The B2B online customer experience can be ruined by excessive hand-holding. Customers should have the ability to handle various tasks. These tasks include product customization, editing/modifying orders, and payments without needing to speak with the support staff.
A professional self-service system should be built to offer registered users a respectable level of administrative functionality.
Enhance and Achieve Greater Customer Experience Using Kapture
A Knowledge Management System that is offered by Kapture can help you develop an efficient and useful self-serve portal for your B2B business. Create a centralized hub for all the knowledge base consisting of FAQs, articles, videos, etc, and make it available to customers so that they can learn and resolve issues on their own.
Kapture’s AI-powered chatbot has the ability to resolve most customer issues without agent intervention. The AI-powered bot uses the KMS and past customer interactions to come up with the most accurate resolution. This can reduce a significant amount of your agent’s workload and keep them more focused on other important issues.
Implementing Kapture’s self-serve can save agents’ as well as customers’ time.
