Service Design for B2B customers.

We discussed the intricacies of B2C service design in the last essay, thank you indeed for receiving it so well - it was read 11K times in the last week, a number I am appeased with. I have been getting request emails since to address the same topic for the B2B (business to business) universe. So here I'm .. your wish is my command.

Let me begin this by posing a question for you.

Who buys a Rolex to see time?

The right answer for a vast majority of people who can't afford the watch is likely to be: No one.

The right answer for those who buy a Rolex to go with their Rolls Royce is likely to be: Well, I do. It is a fine timepiece.

Somewhere between these two different islands lies the water in which the dolphins of the B2B universe come to play. The popular view on service is that it naturally applies to B2C engagements better. Well, that is because it is an easier frame for people to imagine: a corporation serving a customer. If you think (deep thought) you would understand that there can't be a B2C without a B2B. Let me take an example of the ITES industry (as it puts food on my table, currently). For a BPO A to serve the end consumer of brand B, it is important that it serves Brand B well first because a disgruntled brand B, will cause the relationship to end abruptly, leaving no room for the end customer to be served.

The goal of both efforts (B2C and B2B Service Design) is the same.

Increasing comfort and convenience and reducing effort, thereby making the experience pleasant. It is vital to note here that, unlike a B2C arrangement in which the customer more often than not has limited resources and time to invest in changing supplier, in the B2B engagement it is literally someone's job to see if a relationship is serving the business interests. Someone assessing you 8 hours a day every day. 

Needless to say, you gotta deliver better.

So in the equation of service design with the core delivery and economic imperative, a whole lot of other considerations make entry too, listing a few here:

• The search, who can provide the same level of service cheaper?
  • Is there a provider who would provide better service for the same price?
• How do they (service provider) operate as an organisation, does it inspire confidence?
• Do I dislike the person, I interact with in the service provider organisation?
• Can changing this partner add to my equity within my organisation?
• By supporting them (service providers) will I be seen colluding with them?
• They don't pay me, I am paid by my organisation so I should make sure in the face of a conflict the one who pays for the invoice wins, which is my employer.

How does one deal with these complexities and come out as a winner, is the question?

Covid has not particularly helped the situation get any better.

The key to winning is to know your customer well and give them reasons beyond financial fitment to remain in a business relationship with you. The follow-up question is how do we do it?

It is important for us to find a way to meditate on below three aspects, with an extreme sense of urgency.

1. Are we giving enough reasons for the B2B clients to continue doing business with us in these stressed times? If so, what are those: quantified.
2. How is specific work that we execute on behalf of our client projected to be in short term (0-90days)?
3. How strongly are the clients placed to continue in their operation and in relationship with us?

Extended lockdowns and weak productivity have substantially reduced the goodwill of efforts put in to ensure business continuity.  The toil of making the computing infrastructure, software platform and the employee (though in a reduced capacity) available for operation, is when scrutinised with objectivity, comes out to be an effort guided to secure self-sustenance of the service provider: self-preservation. You see if a service provider doesn't work, they go belly up. Therefore continuity can’t be seen or quoted as a differentiator.

A framework to provide the service providers with a basis for initiation of measured and informed action to meet the below objectives is needed.

1. Secure short-term and medium-term fiscal interest.
2. Create authentic short and medium-term projections.
3. Categorise risk exposure on the clients.
4. Evolve solution offering so that it remains relevant in the changing landscape of business and related operation.
5. Create exit plans on high-risk relations and adjust the cost accordingly.
6. Make investments in areas that are to remain positive.

There are four structural elements in the framework that I would like to put forth. The service provider should collect qualitative data/intel from their B2B clients on these.

1. Who is your customer/client?
2. What is the client busy with these days?
3. How are they planning to engage with their end customers?
4. What experience principle are they contemplating at the moment?

Let's explain these building blocks.

Who is your customer/clients?

The objective is to create personas for the clients so that we better understand the nature of our clients and the ways in which they are coping up with the turbulences of their business. In our qualitative input collection, we have to ensure the below.

1. Contextual research to develop a deep understanding of the client.
   1. What is the need of the client business in the current times, from us and from their paying customers?
   2. What actions are they taking to secure their needs?
2. What is the symbolic image of the service provider in the minds of the clients?
   1. Do they view us as key strategic partners?
   2. Do we have a role to play in restoring normalcy at their end?
   3. Is the crisis helping us upgrade our standing in their assessments?
3. Who are the other partners that they are doing business with?
   1. What is going to be the impact on those relationships?

What are the clients busy with, these days? 

The Pandemic has brought about a change in the routine and expenditure of all organisations. While some spending is still being done a lot of the cash outflow has been wilfully stopped or greatly restricted. From a set of activities that are being performed, when we collect the subjective input, we can determine the below.

1. Perspective.
   1. What have they gone through?
      1. What are they doing about it?
2. Dreaming.
   1. Which are the areas in which they have placed their aspirations into?
3. Planning
   1. What has been their business continuity plan at an org level?
   2. What does the restoration look like?
4. Purchase.
   1. Have they made a significant purchase recently at an org level?
      1. Acquisition?
      2. Major investments?
5. Experience.
   1. What steps have they taken to shape the experience of the below important stakeholders in their business, in this crisis?
      1. End customer.
      2. Employees.
      3. Vendors.
6. Review/ Sharing.
   1. What kind of public perception are they trying to build for themselves through the interactions that they have with their end customers?

How are they planning to engage with their end customers?

1. Value creation happens at the point of interaction between the brand and the customers. In the knowledge of this principle, we need to start becoming present in the medium in which they are willing to conduct these exchanges.
   1. Mobile Application: What is the thrust of the change? Learn and adjust.
   2. Website: How is the website changing? What is it trying to become?
   3. Physical visits: What is the message that the brand is sending out? From the promises that they are making will emerge your business opportunity.

What 'experience principle' are they contemplating on?

Organisations within all the limitations of the market and their own cash flow constraints will have to return to full-scale operation assisted either by fresh capital infusion by means of borrowing or other methods like sale of equity for additional capital, etc. When they do so they will need to devise a strategy for functioning wrt.

1. Value preservation
2. Growth within the segment
3. Expansion
4. Diversification

We need to understand which way are they going so that we adjust our collective post-COVID plans accordingly.

1. Exploration based.
   1. Are they planning to venture into new market segments geographically, demographically or in-class/price segment?
   2. Communal.
      1. Are they planning to milk the existing customer base to cross and upsell other service offerings?
   3. Hospitable.
      1. Are they planning on parting with some portion of their revenue to re-kindle loyalties within their customers?
   4. Local.
      1. Are they expected to get local or hyper-local? Is contraction their game plan?

Who in our (service providers organisation) should do it?

1. These strategic inputs have to be collected at an operational level. Therefore, the deep links within the client ecosystem should be put to use.
2. Sales and Operation leads are required to conduct this exercise for all the active customers/clients.
3. These have to be collected somewhat covertly, I do not need to tell you why.
4. A very high degree of integrity and sincerity will have to be displayed in conducting this exercise. Actively fight with the natural push of applying +ve bias to input.
5. A +ve report if it eventually meets with the -ve outcome; the world will know that in the exercise we lost objectivity and as a result added overheads.
6. Absolute confidentiality should be maintained in this task therefore delegation of work is not to be done.

If we succeed in conducting this exercise well, we will have all the inputs needed to base our service design on. To know what are the elements of service design, read the article published last week.

(Link to the article: https://www.lavkush.co.in/2021/06/service-design-for-indian-customer.html )

I must however point out that the distinction between a B2C and B2B is stark. In a B2C endeavour, we devise and design for groups of customers but in B2B set up we design for each customer separately. Personalisation pays better dividends in B2B.

At the cost of repetition, let me say: there is no B2C without B2B.

At all times keep your B2B clients updated on both your intentions and tangible actions that you are taking and are planning to take to make their run pleasant with you.

Go design!!

Most importantly, do get vaccinated and take very good care of yourself.

Service & Churn!

Agreement on the need to retain customer is easily arrived at, not too many views against this motion is voiced because it is no longer a closely guarded secret that mighty aren’t those who acquire customers at the rate hurricane destroys whatever comes in its way alone but also those who retain a great majority of those who choose to stop by, more like what a humble piece of sponge does to water when they get to date. Companies that become formidable brand force .. do so not solely by their aggressive acquisition drives but by building a solid foundation of loyal customers. Customer who are willing to come back for more!!

Enough has been said and written already to establish that cost of keeping a customer engaged in the long term is almost always lesser than acquiring a new one. I do not mean to paint customer acquisition effort as anything any less important, you need the denominator to gain weight by every passing day to survive, what is truly, an unforgiving and unapologetically so, market. New customer acquisition is key to success because your investors and other stakeholders will beat you to death if you do not beat your projections. A humble product becomes a brand when it has by its side a sea of customers who keep returning to them; take top ten companies in any sector and you will realize that all of them have done a phenomenal job in retaining their bases. You always get to choose which segment you wanna target .. thing here to remember is that same choice is also available with the customer .. in the same price range whom does he or she want to do business with, is up to them.

The real question then is;  what is it that gets the customer to keep making a brand a provider of their choice? If 100 people were asked the reason, at least 95 of them will list below 5 in their top 10 reasons in different order of priority. Here is how I see the sequence.

1. Price 
2. Usefulness/Relevance 
3. Reliability
4. Ease of use 
5. Experience.

If you try to club these further .. you’ll be left with just two broad components.

1. Product construct ( Price and features) 
2. Customer Experience  (Service, value and everything else in between)

Proof of price and validity of usefulness gets answered conclusively by the rate of acquisition. If people are buying you; you have certainly got some bit of it right! Keep looking for ways to optimize and get better but the fact that you’re selling gives you a reason to remain in the business. But always remember what got you here .. won’t get your there ( there being a higher place, in this argument)

Then comes the complex question; how many are you really retaining in the long run? Or simply put why customers who saw value in pursuing you initially, have pushed you out of their lives, eventually? What went wrong? With price there is only so much elbow space for you to do things, because you are constrained by viability and innovations, powerful ones, do not spring like mushrooms after rain, every day, sadly, if it did you could broaden the horizon. The other part, however, which is ‘customer experience’ is limitless - You get to play the part you choose in the theatre of service. This mind you, is not as much about throwing money at the problem as much as it is about applying thought and building solutions. Here you can get as creative as efficient and as smart as you perhaps would want to be. Money makes the world go around and service quality is not an exception to that rule; budget may limit you to remain minimal. Which is why in my view you can pick these three elements to make a difference. (I'm no expert at this .. I'm learning the trick of the trade)  

Education - You need to understand that what is simple and intuitive in your assessment may appear complex and limiting in your customer’s worldview. Users will always think differently about your product and services simply because they have not partnered in designing, development, or roll out of your services. There are other things that they do all day long, unlike you. To take your message across you will have to create a map of understanding, one in which the customers has to make little or no effort in getting ahead. Every communication that you make with your customer is an opportunity for you to make your customer more knowledgeable about your product and services. We love what is easy and customers are no different, the day your customer learns your services well enough it will become the reason for them to stick. Let’s take an example .. why do most windows users willingly stick to it despite knowing that a Mac is a better operating system? Familiarity ( price also is) is the reason.. you have to make your users as familiar and friendly with your product as possible.

Service - Moment of truth is when the rubber meets the road. No matter what you conceive how well you think you have executed it .. it will break down every once in a while and when it does you will need people to fix it swiftly on one side and on the other you will need to work with those who are impacted - service recovery! Customer service is not only about sorries or thank you(s) it, as a matter of fact, is also everything else in between. I’ll link two more articles that I have written on customer service here for you to go thru - write-ups clearly defines the design and their significance - DO MAKE TIME FOT IT.

#1 Customer Experience - It matters!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/10/customer-experience-it-matters_28.html

#2 Customer Feedback, should you care? 

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/12/customer-feedback-should-you-care-enough.html 

Close looping - People and organization do not fail in constructing a comprehensive coherent design, what gets missed, more often than not is the fact that different pieces of the puzzle do not come together in time for the storyboard to get complete - for the customer to read effortlessly. Creating a list of sweet adjectives is one thing, calling them ‘values’ is another and upholding them in every task that is undertaken is a different ball game, altogether. If even one activity in your organization places your own interest over your customers .. you aren’t as customer-centric as you claim to be - truth be told. Simplest examples could be: 

1. Lucrative deals that conceal conditions.
2. Keeping revisions from your customers.
3. Benefits that are promised but not processed in time.
4. Choosing to design systems that require ‘lesser effort’ despite every logical argument pointing towards the alternative approach.
5. Counting coins… going back on stated commitments.

Orgs ignore to value their commitments after that coveted purchase has been made by the customer. Litmus test - “Benefits not received” if this thing makes even a portion of your customer feedback - you clearly haven’t done a good job in getting everyone in your organization to understand ‘customer centricity’. People have creative ways of explaining such slippage, they blame it on systems or lack of it, some even have the audacity of pushing ‘was busy’ argument in for such mayhem etc but for all you and I know, it is never about excuses. At the very core it is about that individual or department or organization caring little - just that, nothing more .. nothing less! This is not a situation however that can’t be corrected but it will certainly take the investment of ‘giving up greed ’, not getting 'seduced or sucked into mindless urgency' and building a 'culture that values customers more than everything else' .. even profits in the short term. You will have to learn to wait till you are ready, make arrangements for your workforce to abide by those principles. Play by the rules .. win but always remember that winning fairly is more important. Ends do not justify the means. 

Basically, close looping, in this context, means that you will have zero difference between your thoughts, words, and actions - not an easy thing to attain but whoever has ever got there has remained a darling to their customers. 

On that note... I leave you to think and correct whatever is broken because there is never a better time than NOW to reboot…