How Cerillion is filling the B2B Experience Gap
Investing in and reinventing your B2B customer experience isn’t without its challenges, but it needn’t be so tricky – Leonardo Hodgson, Senior Product Manager, explains how Cerillion’s pre-integrated product suite can help improve your customer experience.
A lot has been discussed and published recently about the ever-increasing importance of customer experience (CX) as a fundamental part of CSP strategy and a key tactic to improve the business performance of any company.
Savvy B2C companies have been quicker to realise the benefits than their B2B counterparts, adapting their processes to better serve customers in a digital world, but also unencumbered by the complexities of many B2B businesses.
Our recent online panel discussion between CX thought leaders – The Great B2B Experience Gap: What Can You Do To Close It? – helped to explain some of the main reasons for this gap, as well as presenting potential solutions to reduce it. In short, B2B is a hard and complex model. Customers are more resistant to sudden and disruptive changes, in part because there are multiple stakeholders involved, each with different goals and expectations.
In addition, the solutions and platforms used in the enterprise market are often more expensive and riskier to modify, being composed of complicated architectures or based on legacy technologies. It’s also harder to get management buy-in to sponsor B2B CX projects because of the long-term required to achieve the benefits or return on investment.
So, in summary, there are many reasons that cause B2B transformation projects to end up taking longer to be implemented or worse still not even get off the ground in the first place.
Consequently there are multiple factors to consider when designing and implementing a successful B2B CX strategy to enable a perfect alignment of customer needs and business goals; starting from the company culture and commitment from all teams to embrace a customer-centric model, all the way down to the actual product offering itself.
At Cerillion, we have been working with B2B customers in a broad range of industries for over twenty years, and we continue to invest significant R&D in this market, helping our customers to deliver a superior experience to their customers by focusing on the following key areas:
Digital-first Engagement
The current top support channel requirements from today’s customers include instant access to information, timely responses, and fast problem resolution at their fingertips. To address these needs, Cerillion Self Service provides a versatile platform on which to offer a range of online self-service features, including placing new orders, managing services, viewing and paying bills, downloading itemised usage reports, all available through a multi-language, mobile-first, chat-bot enabled web portal, or via dedicated mobile apps.
Streamlined Quote-to-Cash
Key to any successful B2B sales process is the ability to easily issue multiple quotes and manage a pipeline of new opportunities. Cerillion includes an intuitive and fully configurable sales and order management system, offering comprehensive lead and opportunity management, complemented by powerful CPQ capabilities to produce quotes for both new and existing customers.
Multi-channel CRM Processes
Customer journeys may involve a variety of communication channels, therefore, a strong omnichannel experience is critical. CRM Plus provides a fully integrated suite of functions to allow sales and customer service staff to manage all aspects of the customer lifecycle efficiently, from initial contact to sales, post-sales, and financial and marketing management. It enables high-quality, consistent customer service across all contact channels, including call centres, dealer outlets, online portals, apps and social media platforms.
Configuration not Customisation
The pre-integrated suite offers a no-code approach to mapping business rules and processes across the whole BSS/OSS solution through flexible configuration. Designed with a strong focus on user experience, Cerillion products are intuitive and straightforward to use for an increasingly digital-native customer base. This same software is used by the Cerillion Managed Services team, bringing the benefits of first-hand operational experience feeding directly into product enhancements, and the support services provided to other clients.
Investing in CX should be a win-win situation for everyone – business customers are delighted by intuitive, well-designed user interfaces delivering slick journeys that let them simply do what they need, whenever they need to. On the other side, CSPs get an important competitive advantage in addition to improving customer retention and growth.
For a real-world example, have a look at this case study explaining how Cerillion’s BSS solution has transformed Imagine’s customer experience by driving strong digital engagement through its mobile app and self-service channels.
If your business is looking to improve its B2B experience, speak to one of our consultants today about Cerillion Enterprise.