The “consumerisation” movement is shifting the sales process out of the control of the seller as enterprise buyers begin to mimic consumer shopping behaviours. With this shift, the value of the customer experience is now more important than cost to business and IT decision-makers.
These are among the findings of an Avanade survey on the changing sales process and buying patterns of business and IT decision-makers.
Other study highlights include:
* Customer experience now tops price as the most important factor in a buying decision by an enterprise decision-maker. Notably, business buyers are willing to pay up to 30% more for a product or service that offers an improved customer experience.
* Businesses no longer have control over information shared about their products or services. 61% of business decision-makers report third-party sites and feedback from business partners, industry peers or social channels is more important than conversations with a company’s sales teams when making a purchasing decision.
* To help navigate this change, companies are enlisting new people and departments to manage the customer experience. Compared to three years ago, customer support and call centres, IT and marketing are the leading groups now playing a larger role in the customer experience.
* 70% of respondents believe technology will mostly replace human interaction with customers in the next 10 years. Anticipating this change, businesses are making new technology investments, changing business processes and redesigning organizational roles. More than 80% of companies have changed at least one business process in the past three years to better interact with customers.
“The consumerisation of IT is dramatically transforming the traditional ways companies sell products and services to other businesses and consumers,” says Rudi Greyling, Avanade South Africa’s chief technology officer and Innovation lead.
“Businesses have lost control of the sales process, and B2B and B2C buying models are merging. It’s no longer business-to-business or business-to-consumer – it’s business-to-everyone. Those businesses that embrace today’s complicated customer relationships are creating longer-term and more lucrative relationships with customers.”
This new global study builds on findings from Avanade’s “Work Redesigned” research conducted in January 2013. Progressive companies are changing business processes to adapt to a new style of work influenced by mobile devices, collaboration tools and social technologies.
In this latest survey, Avanade found that businesses are changing processes to embrace the new business buyer and by increasing customer sales and support technologies (44% globally against 24% in South Africa (SA)), increasing the number of employees interacting with customers (40% globally versus SA 47%) and adding automation to the sales process (32% globally versus 29% in SA).
This ultimately reveals that South Africa is lagging slightly behind this trend in applying technology to increase customer sales.
There are business benefits to making these changes. The research shows that businesses investing in technology to support better customer service and modifying internal roles are seeing positive results.
Specifically, the companies making these changes are experiencing increases in customer loyalty (61% globally versus 57% in SA), revenues (60% globally versus 86% in SA) and customer base (60% globally versus 64% in SA).
“This just shows the huge potential in revenue for South Africa businesses if they invest in technology to support better customer service,” adds Greyling.