What customers want
In today's connected society of digitization, customer expectations and demands are higher than ever before. In the world of B2C this is nothing new, however the trend is gradually taking over B2B business as well. According to recent studies by McKinsey & Co, more than 90 percent of B2B buyers use a mobile device at least once during the decision process. Despite this, fewer than 10 percent of the B2B companies in their survey indicated that they have a compelling mobile strategy—a figure that’s three times lower than top-performing B2C organizations.
Mobile usage is one thing, but the study proves an important point. B2B customers are no longer interested in processes that are time consuming, complex and requires lots of manual work. This has been further enhanced by the Covid-19 pandemic, accelerating B2B companies' efforts in digital transformation. In fact, recent data show that we have catapulted five years forward in business digital adoption during the pandemic.
The fast adoption of digital business is not surprising. Customer behaviors and preferred interactions have changed significantly during the pandemic, with 75 percent of people using digital channels for the first time indicating that they will continue to use them when things return to “normal”. Also, US consumers are accelerating adoption of digital channels, a trend seen across global regions. For example, 28% of private bank customers with digital access in the US, were first time users of digital bank services in April.
In short, providing digital services that are simple, fast and efficient is highly favourable for all sorts of companies out there.
Performance of B2B digital leaders
Companies leading digital development and adoption have been shown to outperform their "not-so-digital" peers. In fact, according to a recent study by McKinsey & Co, common business performance metrics such as revenue growth, operating profit and TSR (total shareholder returns) all proved higher for companies who are in the top quartile of digital adoption. And this was before the pandemic!
Furthermore a clear cut connection was made between corporate digital maturity, 3 year TSR and 5 year revenue growth, increasing exponentially. This goes to show that digitizing your processes not only matches your customer expectations and therefor improves experience, but also leads to significantly better results. So where do you start? There are a lot of processes that can be digitized of course, but which one is most important? We'll start at the beginning of the journey.
Onboarding - the foundation of your costumer journey & experience
Often - and unsurprisingly so - focus tends to lie in onboarding when it comes to digital customer experience. Nearly 40% of customers abandon onboarding processes in digital channels. Why? Deloitte did some exploring and discovered that people give up when the onboarding process takes too long, or when it requires more information than people are willing to disclose. From a modern customer onboarding, expectations are;
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- Speed – onboarding has got to be fast;
- It has to be 100% digital with no physical store/branch visits required;
- It can be done on a mobile, tablet or laptop;
- It’s 100% paperless – no paper forms or contracts to sign.
This means you have to be immediate, present, relevant and proactive, when creating your onboarding flows. And the effect is not only a better customer experience in the short term. Digital onboarding creates a visibility and insight which a physical onboarding process can't. It creates a lot of insight and control over the process: bottlenecks are easily identified, and improvements are easily tested and implemented. Somewhere between compliance requirements, your company's digital capabilities and customer needs is where you will find the sweet spot of digital onboarding, illustrated below.
Roaring digitizes and automates your customer journeys
