Having the best product is just one piece of the puzzle. Encouraging repeat and loyal customers starts with creating a fantastic B2B customer experience.
There are plenty of ways to create this positive experience and luckily, many don’t take a tremendous amount of effort. Before we jump into the tips, there is one term you should know, as it is the main thing you’re trying to overcome.
Buyer’s Remorse
Buyer’s Remorse is a smaller part of something called cognitive dissonance. It is the mental conflict that occurs when a person’s behaviours and beliefs don’t align. This is most often caused due to regret felt after a purchase, better known as buyer’s remorse.
Buyer’s remorse is often associated with large purchases like cars or real estate, however, consumers can feel regret even after the smallest purchase.
For more on Cognitive Dissonance, its causes, and effects, check out our other blog.
Creating A Positive Post-Buy Experience
Expectations
Lofty goals and broken promises is a guaranteed way to ensure one-time customers.
It’s easy to say yes to every request, and over-promise on your services. The thing is, while that will indeed net you the first sale, when the client realizes you can’t actually do any of the things you said you would, you’ll lose them forever.
Set realistic goals and achievable timelines that you know you can hit. Doing exactly what you said you would do, in the time you said you would do it, is the perfect way to satisfy your client.
Understanding
Don’t try to solve the problems you think they have. Solve the problems they do have.
Taking the time to understand their industry, past issues, and possible pain points means you’ll be able to help them solve their problems more effectively. This can often lead to avoiding problems in the first place.
Check Out Another Blog: Cognitive Dissonance: Causes, Effects, and How To Avoid It
Prioritization
It would be nice to have the unlimited resources necessary to squash every issue as they arise. For most though, you’ll need to prioritize which tasks can be handled now, and which ones can wait.
Deciding what to do first can be tricky, but creating categories, a ticketing system, and allowing customers some level of determination in the urgency of those requests is a good start.
You can find a useful guide on prioritizing customer requests, here.
Education
No one likes to be left in the dark.
Your client might not know all the intricate ins and outs of how you do things, but that doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate a basic understanding. There is a huge difference between “It’s not done yet” and “It’s not done yet because of these reasons”.
This point also fits nicely with “expectations”. Knowing how long you’ll have to wait, makes a wait feel shorter and much easier to stomach.
Education (again)
You read that right! This time however, we mean in the other direction.
Setting up ways to collect feedback from your clients is incredibly important. Finding out what you’re doing wrong straight from the source is the best way to fix inefficiencies. You might also be doing something right with certain clients, and not realize how important it is. Missing out on the opportunity to apply it to every one of your relationships.