ShoppingTomorrow b2b-expert group: How to change the customer experience within your supply chain?

B2B-companies want the best experience for their clients, acknowledging the fact that they have to grow together with them. However, because these organizations are a link within the chain, most of the time changes are hard to implement.

As a result, most processes have been evolved and optimized throughout the years, which in turn created lots of legacy and insufficiently utilize today’s options. Additionally, silos are a threat to the customer’s experience; Different departments within an organization operate as separate islands, each with their own KPI’s, instead of offering the client a better and consistent service through all touchpoints of the company.

How to place the client’s interest first within B2B and how to strengthen your position within the chain by offering a valuable customer experience?

To answer this question, Mirabeau and Episerver host an B2B-expertgroup for the second time, applying to this year’s theme: Customer Experience in B2B. Experts of 28 different organizations such as JDE, DAF Trucks, Technische Unie and Rexel, discuss the exact same question: How can I offer my client the best service? A catch-all question that the experts split up in three themes during the first session in Mirabeau’s Digital Studio.

Themes: How does a good customer experience strengthen your position within the chain?

1. Insights: How to get meaning from data and what role does technology play? Which data should you be sharing upstream or downstream within the chain?

2. Proposition (business model): Via which services will you strengthen your operating concept? How can you offer your client a consistent service through all touchpoints?

3. Organization: How do you place your client’s interest first by designing your internal processes? How to implement these changes in order for your employees to embrace them?

Why is a good customer experience in the B2B-chain so important?

Answering the ‘why’ will clarify what employees are occupied with throughout each day and how they can offer added value for their clients. With a clear definition of the ‘why’, your clients will remember your organization much better.

B2B-experts’ perspective

In the video below, experts Roel Zanders (Manager Sales & E-commerce, All Brake Systems) and Tim van Dalen (e-Business Manager, Eriks) introduce themselves. What did they think of the first session and what do they expect to gain from of this expert group?

Watch the video:

Session #02

During the next session in August, the expert group will sink their teeth into the first theme: Insights.

What does exchanging insights for instance mean for inventory management and the added customer value?

- Smart exchange of insights with your chain partners leads to predictive selling and therefore facilitates smart inventory management, resulting into cost reduction.
- An employee equipped with the right information can offer added value for its customer.
- By connecting data, you can offer your client clear status updates and real-time insights.

This session of the ShoppingTomorrow B2B expert-group was the first of a series of five. Do you wish to stay up-to-date on the insights and the best practices of this ShoppingTomorrow B2B Experience expert group? Apply for the email update .

Interested in reading more? Read about the interview with expert Martin Miedema (Makro):The value of participating in a ShoppingTommorrow expert group .