Service portals as a success factor for the digital future

We are currently experiencing a radical change in the entire retail world. Online-only distributors like Amazon, Spotify or Netflix have changed people’s consumer behavior. This not only affects the B2C business, but is also increasingly finding its way into the B2B sector. Because the so-called millenials are the new decision-makers on the customer side and their information, communication and relationship behavior differs from that of previous generations. In the digital world it is no longer enough just to develop good products. Customers today expect a comprehensive shopping and service experience available around the clock. And only if they have a positive experience throughout the entire customer journey can one speak of an excellent customer experience. It is therefore hardly surprising that digital customer service portals are becoming an increasingly important part of the increasingly digital customer relationship.

In this blog post you will learn why a digital customer portal is a success factor for you as a B2B company and how you can achieve more customer satisfaction, efficiency and profitability for your business.

The digital transformation is in full swing. Everyone is talking about Industry 4.0 and means the digital change in terms of products and production processes. New technologies are combined with traditional production systems. Mechanical and plant engineering in particular is concerned with digitizing value chains and equipping production plants or capital goods with new applications, e.g. for predictive maintenance, so that production processes become even more efficient.

However, the customer factor is often neglected. Today more than ever, the following applies: After the purchase is before the purchase. High customer and thus also service orientation is no longer a pure B2C paradigm. It is therefore hardly surprising that more and more B2B companies are discovering the potential inherent in their service and after sales processes and are working on implementation strategies to make this potential available to their customers 24/7. And this is exactly where the digital customer service portals come into play. These can be used intelligently:

Now ask yourself the question: how do we succeed in setting up a digital service portal and fully exploiting its potential? It is a fact that in order to create efficient information retrieval and thus a uniform experience for the customer, all relevant information must be available and up-to-date for the portal across all communication channels. Additionally, the customer must get the feeling that you know him and his needs. Therefore it is important to combine information from different sources:

Depending on its characteristics, a customer portal can be fed from the following data sources:

The personalization credo also applies to service: if the relevant information is made available to the right person at the right time, this increases customer satisfaction and thus also customer loyalty.

Would you also like to create new, digital offers for your customers and generate sales from them? Then attend our webinar on December 15 with the topic“Customer portals as a building block of digitalization for B2B companies”.