Digital channels provide a wonderful marketplace with access to markets and clients around the world. But digital sales also make companies vulnerable. Today, patience is a rare commodity and if things take too long or are too complicated, we get bored, lose focus – and go somewhere else. Today, the ability to provide immediate customer satisfaction has become business critical. Also in B2B.
It all started in B2C, with companies offering new, previously unseen possibilities – like Amazon’s one-click payments and Spotify’s payments on autopilot. These experiences have profoundly changed customer behaviour and raised the bar in expectations. When buying through a digital channel, it takes very little friction for customers to abandon the journey and simply try with another vendor.
Transactions in B2B are made by people, the same people who make fast and easy purchases as consumers. A recent study by the B2B institute found that forty percent or more of millennial respondents claimed to have influence on each stage of the B2B buying process. They have come to expect the same ease to buy online in both their personal and their professional life. Why should they settle for less as B2B customers? If their expectations are not met, no wonder they leave and look for better alternatives elsewhere.
But in reality, B2B is lagging 10 years behind B2C and the fact is that 94% of all online B2B-buyers today experience difficulties when it comes to payments. That is a lot of lost business.
Sales from smartphones continue to rise
Today, more than 70% of all B2B-queries are made from smartphones, according to the Boston Consulting Group. But many B2B companies are still handling processes in the same way they have been doing for decades – for example requiring paper or scanned forms to manually review and approve new customers. Or run credit checks with time consuming manual work that results in oversights and human errors. Not to mention long lead times where it takes days or even weeks for a customer just to be set up in the system. By then, the customer most likely has already moved on, bought from a competing supplier and perhaps even received their product. How often have you abandoned your online purchase because of a lengthy registration form? You see? B2B customers are no different.
Cutting down on hassles
This is why Payer has launched a digital B2B sign up: to cut down on hassles and friction, however small, that may interfere with setting up customers in the buying process. At the same time, we increase security and lower the risk for the merchant. With Payer, the merchant can easily verify business details, run credit checks and make credit decisions – in a few seconds instead of days. At the same time, their customers sign up with just a few clicks.
In a digital world where conversion rates are everything, Payer streamlines the user journey and eliminates friction. With less repetitive typing and more intuitive flows for the buyer, the buying process runs easier. Payer gathers the right data, from customer input as well as other sources, and we make it available for the merchant in the right format, ready to be synced in real time with the ERP and business intelligence (BI) tools.
Everything happens inside the Payer platform. It helps merchants build payment flows that offer customers the right payment methods based on their risk profile, like card prepayment or invoice with the right payment terms. This means customer satisfaction is higher, while the merchants increase conversion, lower their risk and customer acquisition cost.
Customers will always feel welcome back
Another advantage is that once a customer has filled out their information, it is safely stored. No need to add the same information every time they come back to buy, like the registered business number, invoicing and delivery addresses and their preferred payment method. The benefits are of course that returning customers can, just in seconds, verify that all their details are correct and quickly proceed to pay with a seamless experience and minimal input.
At Payer, we know that in business every moment counts. We also know that merchants rarely want to spend time and effort migrating to and maintaining new systems. That is why we built a plug and play-solution that easily integrates with the merchant’s existing shopping experience, so they can get up and running in no time – without having to replace existing systems. That makes Payer an easy solution to choose and maintain.
Want to hear more about how Payer can help? Click here to talk to sales.
