All businesses have the goal of 100% growth without any missteps. Continually improving on service, products, and customer base is the everyday ideal. But realistically, there is the occasional circumstance under which disaster strikes and you lose a big customer, like another business. In this blog we’ll analyze the three main ways that could happen, and how best to protect your company to avoid such a circumstance in the future!
#1: Slow service. In a previous post, we discussed how B2B customers need to be treated just like an individual, with prompt attention and care. Dealing with a larger customer can slip to the wayside if more than one representative is working on the case, or there are multiple services to be completed, or if the solution presents a large workload to your team. Putting off the work can have unfortunate results, however, and lose you one of those big-hitting customers your company thrives on.
#2: Lack of respect. While a business does share a lot of similarities to an individual customer, it’s also important to keep in mind the differences between the two to ensure the success of the relationship. Businesses will often contact customer support over a course of time, using multiple different representatives from their end. It can pay off to have a little bit of brevity when speaking with an individual customer, to encourage comfortable communication. But with businesses, the advantage lies in strict professionalism. Keeping the same tone across all channels and providing consistent information can give your company the reputation of excellence that another company will be able to trust. With a big business, it pays to be precise.
#3: Low security standards. In today’s market, security is of utmost importance to your customers and your own business. PhaseWare’s state-of-the-art security system and cloud-based customer support solution offer the answers to all the security concerns you or your business/customers may present. Check out our recent mention in the Software Advice guide for more information on that!
When a B2B customer becomes an unhappy one, it can be extremely difficult to turn that relationship back into a positive one. The work it takes to backtrack once a mistake has been made is overwhelmingly more effort than the work it would take to prepare your team and avoid these issues to begin with, by providing proactive customer care. There are a couple of key elements to proactive customer care that your company can make use of to keep your B2B customers happy and loyal which you can check out in the next post!