Guest Post: On Digital Sales Channels
Can’t see the forest for the trees? You’re not alone.
As digitalization continues to surround us, we hear that many B2B customers prefer to keep an analogue relationship with a supplier. In fact, across many industrial segments, we keep hearing that customers don’t like using portals, websites, online shops, or chatbots. Instead, they prefer face-to-face interaction, or at a minimum, speaking to their supplier on the telephone.
I ask myself so often…“Really?”
Quickly, I then ask…“Who is the customer?”
Is the customer the company, the account in a CRM entry, the contact, or better yet, a genuine person? The same person who over the weekend sends instant messages to friends and family, uses an embedded ‘voting tool’ to quickly decide on which restaurant the football team prefers to celebrate at Christmas? The same person who books a flight via an app, checks in online and has a QR code for the boarding pass? What makes these experiences different for them?
To be fair with you, being an IT dinosaur myself, whose focus for the past 6 years has been Digital Business, I sympathize with the view from the customer.
Here's a real world example: I often use public transportation in the Frankfurt area. Overall it’s not as bad as they say, at least for local trips. I recently changed phones, and given the hassle of reinstalling the local transport app and connecting my bank account, I reverted to the old-school “buy a ticket from the bus driver with cash” method.
That worked until last week, when I needed to travel out of the area. At the last minute while waiting for bus, I tried to buy a single ticket online, using one of the many digital payment systems. The regional transport provider’s online shop required so much information, so many clicks, so many selections, and of course it even required (yes, required!) personal data, including name, date of birth, etc. It wasn’t possible to switch languages, and that gives you a clue as to the complicated user journey, my German being pretty good these days.
In the end I gave up, waited for the bus to pull up, stepped in, asked the driver for a single ticket to my destination, which was out of the area, and included a train ticket as well. Click, click, ping, ping, Euro 13.75, card reader ready…..not even taking a minute, I was in my seat with a valid ticket. No name, no date of birth, no address, nothing, I could have even paid cash. So easy! Why would I even use an app, or their online shop…why?
This leads me to challenge my colleagues in Digital Sales and Marketing :
Why make the user journey any more complicated than the real world?
Why do you need customer data? For the customer’s benefit, or yours? For compliance and data protection? Really?
Is your online experience created for you or for the customer?
Do you really need online analytics to know how poor the user experience is?
If we make the digital customer journey as simple, or even simpler, than the analogue world, then perhaps we have a chance for real change; otherwise, B2B customers will always prefer the human touch.