The relationship formed between two businesses can be vastly different from the relationship between a business and a customer. Business-to-business relationships are large and slow, often long term, and not always represented by the same person on either side. It’s necessary to keep the differences between business-to-business and business-to-customer transactions present in your mind when navigating either scenario, but when it comes down to it, what’s more important is to acknowledge their similarities.
Businesses have needs, wants, and even feelings. With a business-to-business relationship, you must take care to place the same amount of emphasis on nearly everything that you would when addressing the concerns of an individual. Speed, accuracy, politeness, and availability are paramount. But it’s not always easy to stay in the right head space when conducting your business with another business.
It’s possible, with business-to-business relationships, that every interaction will take place with a different representative. It’s a common situation, and it result with a trend in your workforce to put off getting back in touch about the issue. But that’s only if your company believes that a business is different from a customer. The reality is, as a whole, it will show if you are not on the ready for questions and concerns. Rather than having a one-time instance of slow response, you will wind up with a reputation for slow responses, even if it was a one-time instance. And when a business gets its feelings hurt, much like an individual, that business is unlikely to forgive.
The same sort of pitfall occurs over and over again if your company provides unreliable customer support to its business-to-business relationships. The ripple effect to having a negative experience in a customer support scenario is only amplified when that experience is had by a company on a whole.
So how do you combat the downsides of hurting a business’ feelings? The answer is simple: treat every business with the respect and care that you would an individual.
PhaseWare’s products are created with the customer in mind, even when that customer is a business. With ticket tracking you will be able to see exactly what tickets have been opened and when, to make sure that each concern is addressed in a timely manner, and each contact is counted with the same level of decorum. The automatic reporting solutions will keep every representative in the know, so that a business can receive a fully informed response regardless of whether or not that particular representative has been involved previously. The benefits of offering personalized care to your customers, whether big or small, cannot be overstated, and the same can be said for the importance of your choice in customer support software. PhaseWare’s Tracker Suite can be your right hand man in providing unparalleled customer service, and help your business please its businesses as well as its singular customers.
