Business-to-Business Relationships: Service Matters
Posted by Debbie Dickinson on Tue, Mar 03, 2009 @ 06:55 PM
Everyone knows what a difference great customer service makes. In B(usiness) to C(onsumer), great service has direct, daily impact on revenue. Consumers rate service with their feet. Poor service means customers walk away never to return. Great services encourage customers to come back, again and again, and bring friends. People want to do business where they are respected and treated well.
Is the same true in business-to-business relationships? In the B-to-B market, connections take place behind the scenes, with little or no end user contact. How can standards of service apply here? Let’s consider the case of six meat packaging plants and a national supplier of lunchmeat to retail grocery stores. Imagine you work as a purchasing agent for the national supplier. It is your job to review the plants and make a choice as to which of the six best choices will get your business. Here is how you rate them:
- One plant has great product.
- Another plant has great product and is always reliable.
- Plant number three has great product, is reliable, and competitively priced.
- The fourth plant has great product, is reliable, competitively priced and helps your business succeed through service that makes you more competitive.
- Our final plant option has great product, is reliable, competitively priced, helps your business succeed through service that makes you more competitive AND doing business with them is easy and fun.
The final choice, put in these terms of comparison makes the decision easy, right? Thinking with the mindset of a purchasing agent, how much does your decision making in business differ from how you make personal buying decisions? Many B-to-B suppliers operate with the assumption that they have little in common with service icons from the B-to-C world. Look again. Here’s a challenge for those of you in the B-to-B market: List three places you personally frequent. Beyond convenience, what are the top two reasons you do business with these establishments? Now turn it around: What is one compelling reason to do business with you that you can repackage and offer your customers?