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Bringing meaningful personalisation to B2B

With two years of restrictions pushing everybody to rely heavily on the digital world, businesses across retail and B2B have invested heavily in advancing their eCommerce propositions to keep up with demand.

The ‘B2B consumer’

B2C consumers expect an elevated level of convenience, speed and personalisation as the norm – an expectation that has now filtered through to the workplace. As digitally savvy millennials now assume buying powers at work, suppliers must address the failings of legacy systems and web shops in delivering a rich user experience.

The B2B world has been forced to revaluate everything that makes up its online operations, from initial enquiries through to fulfilment and delivery. Alongside the shifts in physical approaches, many have also invested in the key functional features needed to improve their online user experience, such as faster loading speeds, effortless navigation, easy checkout processes, confidence building-security, and powerful search tools.

But creating the features that will boost customer engagement and keep them coming back to your store requires one thing – personalisation. And the key here is that it has to be a truly personalised experience.

The problem is that integrating meaningful personalisation in B2B is a little more of a challenge than it is in retail, and that’s why so many businesses have shied away from tackling the challenge head-on until now.

How does personalisation differ from B2C to B2B?

1 – A different target customer

The main difference when working with personalisation in B2B and B2C is that the B2B customer can be multiple users with different roles under one company identity. In B2C, one user is making all the purchasing decisions, and therefore building a data profile and adapting targeting is a far simpler process.

2 – A need for longer-term relationships

B2B businesses have traditionally been built on the strength of their relationships with their customers. The lifetime value of a B2B customer is much higher than a retail customer, making nurturing positive customer relationships even more crucial to long-term success. Having a great experience and a familiar approach are key factors for many companies selecting their primary suppliers.

When customers visit a brand’s online store, they expect the business to know them – what company they are from, what they do and most importantly, what they need to buy. Many B2B companies offer discounts to longstanding customers based on average or annual spend. Other may want to filter the product catalogues customers order from. Replicating this personal touch online and throughout all your processes has its challenges.

3 – A more complex buying journey

For personalisation to be valuable, the user experience must feel uniquely relevant to each customer, no matter where they are in their journey and across every channel available. But with more in-depth buying processes, service level agreements, vast and often varied product lines, bulk or repeat orders, fulfilment complexities and multiple decisions makers to consider, B2B companies experience more complex challenges when implementing personalisation than B2C retailers.

To meet B2B customers’ expectations, all these needs must be addressed individually, while also offering customers a seamlessly connected and easy-to-use buying experience, just as they expect from B2C eCommerce.

The road to success

So, with the message clear that as B2B eCommerce continues to grow, should its need for personalisation, how are brands approaching personalisation in 2022?

In our latest report, Evolving Digital Commerce 2022, we asked over 100 Heads of eCommerce and digital to tell us what developments matter to them most in 2022 – and personalisation appears to be amongst their top considerations.

Our survey revealed that only 40% of respondents in B2B are already offering a personalised website and mobile app experience (v’s 80% of retail respondents surveyed). When asked to identify what personalised experiences were on offer, content came out top – leaving critical touchpoints like navigation, search and checkout lagging behind.

This is because implementing a good strategy across these is not without problems, many of which put B2B businesses off. We found out that the top 3 personalisation challenges brands face in 2022 are:

• Delivering personalisation that customers value and appreciate.
• Measuring tangible ROI from personalisation.
• High costs associated with higher content volume.

The solution to these challenges lies in implementing personalisation platforms powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can work efficiently at scale, deliver intelligent insights, and adapt content appropriately at speed. For that, you need expert assistance.

Backed by over two decades of creating digital solutions across all customer touchpoints, our award-winning team at KPS UK is known for delivering exceptional, personalised user experiences for well-known B2C and B2B household names. 

If you want to know more about delivering meaningful, personalised experiences for your customers, why not have a chat with one of our industry-leading experts.