By Michael Tessler, Managing Partner

In today’s society, we have become very familiar with self-service business models. Amazon has crept into our daily lives, and more people use services like Instacart for groceries than ever before (myself included). It’s clear self-service will become a significant part of how we support customers moving forward, especially considering the push to touchless customer service.

Interestingly, this trend has yet to take hold in much of the business to business (B2B) world. In B2B engagements, a company’s primary goal is to help customers solve a problem they face while running their organization. The idea is to help make their business more efficient, save time, and simplify tasks.

Yet, so many technology companies make it difficult to evaluate, purchase, and digitally obtain their services. Many organizations believe self-service will devalue their technology. Others think it will inhibit their abilities to use pricing as a strategic tool or let competitors gain too much competitive intelligence.

At True North, we believe reducing the effort customers make to try, evaluate, buy, and deploy your product will be critical to your success.

However, self-service is more complicated in the B2B market than the business to consumer (B2C) world. In some B2B cases, products are co-developed with customers and require a high-level of customization. Additionally, sales cycles are often more elaborate, involving individuals from many departments. Finally, the cost associated with a client’s purchase can be incredibly significant compared to low involvement B2C purchases.

To help measure this challenge, the Customer Effort Score (CES) was created. In 2010, researchers from CEB found that reducing the amount of effort a customer has to do to get their problem solved is a higher indicator of customer loyalty than delight. By acting on this insight and removing obstacles for the customer, they found companies can reduce customer service costs and attrition rates. This simple measure captures a customer’s effort required during the purchasing process. In fact, a recent McKinsey report built on this theory. Their idea extended the concept across six steps in the customer journey, including identifying, selecting and buying, customizing, dealing with issues, using the product, and reordering.

To further explore this concept, let’s consider an example. Imagine if a company created a new application that would enable you to find customers that are a perfect fit for your products. This is fantastic. But how could it be better? With self-service.

Using the journeys above, let’s consider how self-service could improve the CES and ask can it help:

• Prospects evaluate if the product solves their problem?

• Candidates compare different solutions and align the internal team?

• Buyers customize or configure the solution to their needs?

• When things go wrong or when something unexpected happens?

• The customer use the product or get more value from the product over time?

• The customer reorder or expand the product?

The answer is a resounding yes. And B2B customers are starting to demand it. To demonstrate the market shift, some 86% of respondents from the same McKinsey report said they prefer using self-service for reordering, instead of dealing with a salesperson.

All that said, a self-service strategy needs to be seamless and make your customer’s lives easier. To implement a B2B self-service strategy, the key is to find the right balance between digital and human interaction. In future blogs, the team at True North will look at opportunities, advancements, and successful ways B2B organizations implement self-service models.