How digital collaboration tools will improve your customer relationship

Kay Oldham Date published: Jun 06, 23

Recently we held a live webinar session to explore how businesses can use technology to build long-term and successful relationships with their customers. Hosted by David Marshall, Enterprise Director and Yuchen Qiao Customer Account Manager from Ideagen, the session explored what customer relationships look like in 2023, the role of technology in these relationships, and why security is still a top concern when sharing information online.

Here's our five minute round-up with the key takeaways from the session. 

How relationships are changing

The customer service landscape changed dramatically during covid, accelerated greatly by the need to adapt to remote working practices, which has resulted in much more of the customer supplier relationship now taking place online rather than more formal, face to face meetings. This shift has impacted how sales leaders are resourcing their teams, with 66% now saying digital channels are more important than traditional ones.

The influence of B2C encounters is having more of an effect on B2B relationships than it has done previously, too. There is an expectation of an immediate response, customers want to find and use information effortlessly rather than waiting and ‘tomorrow’ is often too late – they’re already talking to your competitor.  

We can also see the B2C influence during a customer’s information search as part of purchase decisions. Outside of the traditional tender process, businesses are now much more likely to use online forums and reviews to influence their purchasing decisions.

The role of technology

With seemingly endless technologies on the market, businesses can be forgiven for thinking they constantly need to go in search of the latest, state-of-the-art tool to answer all their customer relationship problems. But this actually isn’t true – customers only want innovation and technology if it genuinely creates value and benefits them.

Above all else, your customers want to get any issues resolved quickly. There are many ways you can use technology to do this, but ultimately it boils down to the ability to provide your customers with a comprehensive, searchable knowledge centre to answer the questions and queries which they can access themselves rather than needing to log and report every issue and wait for the resolution information

It's also important to bear in mind your customer might not always be sat at a desk looking at their computer when they want to get information, or indeed to do business with you. We need to be mindful that now, thanks to flexible working, people are more likely to be working on the go, via their mobiles, tablets and laptop.

Despite the growing preference for self-serving, we wouldn’t want to eliminate human contact in business relationships all together – we know that a lot of the time, this is what really helps to build loyalty and create those long-term partnerships that are so valuable to us. Here, we can use digital tools to help showcase our account managers as experts, which we explain in much more detail in the webinar.

Why security is still a primary concern

At the heart of data breaches, and easiest to measure, is the risk of monetary loss. Whether it’s the cost of fixing the attack, the immediate loss of custom or the cost of making sure it doesn’t happen again – we know that the cost of attacks is predicted to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.

Measuring the reputational damage a data breach can have on a company can be much more difficult to quantify, and we can never know exactly how much the reputational damage from an attack will have affected a company’s bottom line.

Finally, there’s the risk of information loss if hackers manage to gain access to your systems. Again, it’s hard to know the full extent of the damage information loss can do, but at the very least it could cause delays to service delivery, lost opportunities and even legal action. 

When there’s so many risks, it’s not surprising people are concerned. But they really don’t need to be, as long as they’re using the most appropriate digital tools to work with their customers, with the right security credentials in place.

How will you connect and thrive?

Transforming the way you collaborate with clients in a digital space will provide a solid foundation for growing a long and successful relationship. Technology that helps you to be clear, accountable and easy to work will help you to win new business and delight your existing customer base.

Connect and thrive: how portals are the foundation of customer success

Join David Marshall, Enterprise Director and Yuchen Qiao, Customer Account Manager from Ideagen, and explore the impact digital collaboration tools can have on your customer relationships.

Watch on demand