Customer Service via Communities and Forums for B2B and B2C Business
I had the opportunity to speak with three CEOs of different companies about the same topic, two of which were in the aggregation industry and one of which was in the ad-tech sector. I’d like to discuss their and my perspectives on this, and I’d appreciate your candid feedback.
According to my understanding, B2B customer service differs greatly from B2C customer care. You have a consumer in both circumstances who is using your products and services. In a Business — to — business partnership, nevertheless, the nature of the association is significantly more complex.
How is B2B different from B2C in case of customer Service?
- B2B customer service involves more stakeholders.
- B2B customers have more urgent business needs.
- B2B relationships last longer.
First CEO said that as we are into B2C, we can’t take the queries on forum threads and cannot address them publicly. Sometimes clients can post system issues and our system falls in public threads. It will be very hard for us to address them and it will ruin our reputation so we will be managing client support via an internal ticketing system. As a result, we created a highly tailored solution to meet their needs. This is something I am certain of.
Second CEO, we had discussions with supports team, like how can expedite supports and can bring best experience to both B2B/ B2C customers then Last discussion what i had with my first CEO, same points has been repeated on 80% of discussions time, then we drawn a conclusions like.
- Make enough short videos for clients.
- Guide the customer through auto tutor in GUI.
- Build Broader knowledge base.
- Support them with ticketing systems and calls 24/7.
I was persuaded, and I set up the majority of these in Atlassian.
The third CEO, there were discussions with the CEO and certain delegates, and I happened to be present when the same subject came up. How to manage high-volume support tickets more efficient?
Then there was a strong push to create forums to address or reduce bandwidth for assistance.Then I asked if it was a good idea for an aggregator to enter Community boards to provide customer support.
I received a response. Yes, it is used by B2B companies, and I got a few examples as well.
Here’s how I see it. If you’re considering using community forums for customer service, here’s what I recommend.
- Select the threads and types of topics you want to address it publicly.
- There’s no need to bring all internal issues, and the system falls for public debate.
- Threads were aggressively involved with and well-monitored.
- Remove it if there are any faulty threads.
- Any conversations should not offer competitors an edge.
- Defend yourself against spammers.
- Engage a specific team for it (Dev, Engagement, and Management), which would be an excellent decision in the long run.
If you are into B2C, high traffic booking sites like flipkart, goibibo, expedia, amazon then the option what i would like to recommend you.
- Build your own chat bot to support the customer instantly and provide the best customer experience.
- Integrate with most used IM (whatsapp, viber, etc) with your support systems.
- You can use a third party chat bot builder or you can create one of your own using AI / ML. I recommend building a voice chatbot for mobile devices.
If you are B2B, B2B2B then, then these are the recommendations from me.
- Build your brand Community forum with a solid knowledge base which really helps you to retain customers.
- Automate all communication channels and it should be centralized.
- If you want to automate communication, you should undoubtedly consider a chatbot, but make sure the sort of chatbot you choose is appropriate for your business needs and, of course, your budget.
What you do at your company for best customer supports lets us hear from you.
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