Use Case

How Businesses Can Utilize Digital Self-Service To Improve Customer Experience

Solve the issue of fragmented buyer experience with a B2B customer portal that enables a smooth after-sale process. Consolidate data and manage the relationship while offering insights and autonomy to increase customer stickiness.

Status Quo

Convenience is one of the most important elements of contemporary purchasing journeys, even in B2B. 

Currently, many businesses offer customers information about their orders and relationship, but from multiple and disparate sources – such as the ERP, CRM, or a Customer Service tool. 

This is like handing customers a deck of unshuffled playing cards and asking them to find the ace of spades; they'll find it eventually, but it will be inconvenient and slow.

A lack of digital self-service leads to an inconvenient and fragmented user experience for the customer, and an increase in manual and costly interactions between sales and customer relationship managers. 

Customers lack transparency and autonomy as they cannot easily find information about order history, related products, or new offers. They must rely on slow manual interaction to provide the information they want.

Challenges for B2B Businesses Without Digital Self-Service

  • Without a portal consolidating all information, customers only have access to limited information about historic orders and interactions.
  • Personalization and tailored offers are difficult to offer without consolidated customer data, leading to missed sales opportunities.
  • Customer relationship management involves a great deal of manual interaction and processes as customers must reach out to a human to get the data they’re looking for. 
    This maintenance by sales and service reps is both costly and time-consuming.
  • Lack of convenience for the customer, which may lead them to look to competitors with better after-sales user experiences.

What is Digital Self-Service?

Digital Self-Service is a customer portal that supports the full customer lifecycle by providing complete visibility into all elements of the business relationship. It manages the after-sales process by consolidating all information and services related to the customer. A Digital Self-Service portal includes information on:

  • Order history
  • Product updates
  • Service data
  • The knowledge center
  • Company and product news
  • Customer-specific assortments
  • Subscriptions
  • Recommendations
  • Troubleshooting

By merging the customer, transaction, and product data into one unified portal, Digital Self-Service puts buyers into the driving seat. Insights, customer service, and after-sales services such as maintenance and repairs are available at the click of a button.

From the sales side, customer portals can be leveraged by sales and service reps by personalizing offers based on previous order histories.

By giving customers autonomy and visibility, B2B businesses can offer a more convenient and cost-effective user experience that will in turn positively impact retention and revenue.

Business Outcomes of Digital Self-Service

How does Digital Self-Service benefit your business, and what kind of value does it generate?

Increase Customer Satisfaction & Stickiness

  • Acts as an easy-to-use central point of contact
  • Possibility of personalized experiences
  • Tailored products and services 
  • 24/7 availability, with access to information at any time
  • Increased customer value through after-sales services
  • Support through the entire customer 

Increase Revenue & Share of Wallet

  • Cross-selling and up-selling 
  • Repeat purchases/subscriptions
  • Personalized offers
  • New value-add services based on history and insights
  • Product and service announcements and company news
  • AI-based offers at the right time

Cost Reduction Through Self-Service

  • Reduce cost and time per contact
  • Focus on high-value services
  • Reduce recurring manual tasks

Efficiency on Buying & Selling Sides

  • Acts as a convenient ‘one-stop shop’ for information
  • Customers gain full control with self-service
  • Tailored and individualized experiences and dashboards increase quality of customer experience
  • Order templates and automatic replenishment save time and money
  • Customer insights help to inform future offers

Spryker Capabilities

Digital Self-Service Features from the B2B-Solution with Spryker Cloud Commerce OS

Our B2B Solution with Spryker Cloud Commerce OS includes a range of features to enable a Digital Self-Service portal, such as Invoice Management and personalized Offers. 

Alongside this core capability, we work with an extensive network of partners who can further extend your business self-service capabilities with features such as a dedicated Customer Service Tool.

Supporting you every step of the journey, our in-house business consultants offer tailored enabling services, such as Digitization Mapping, to ensure your transformation to Digital Self-Service is successful.

Spryker Capabilities

  • My Account functionality
  • Configurable bundles
  • Customer-specific pricing
  • Product Links
  • Account-specific assortment
  • Return Management
  • Invoice generation
  • Approval processes
  • Shopping List/Order Templates
  • User Management

Enabling Services

  • Calibration session
  • Customer journey analysis
  • Digitization mapping
  • Operating model coaching
  • Process design workshop

Technology Partners

  • Tealium
  • Fareye
  • Vertex
  • Adyen
  • Balance

Customers

Success speaks for itself. See how thriving businesses are using Spryker capabilities to customize, scale and win!

Läpple

Läpple is a global provider of pressed parts, body shell components, standardized parts, rotatory tables and automation tools. They have 2700 employees and a 500M€ turnover.

Customer challenge:
Läpple wanted to maximize their online shop revenue while delivering high-performance and customized options. There were millions of products, with up to 600 variants, many continuously in stock and available at short notice.

Solution:
Fibro (one of Läpple's brands) went live in just 4 months, including a Self-Service portal with a consolidated view on the commercial relationship. This empowered the buyers with several convenient functionalities.

Outcomes:

  • Higher customer satisfaction
  • More efficient workflows
  • Streamlined operations
  • More and better quality data from customers

PFERD

Pferd, part of August Rüggeberg, is a leader in the development, production & distribution of tool solutions for work on surfaces and material cutting. Pferd reinveted their digital commerce strategy with Spryker heavily relying on seamless integrations and business-driven capabilities.

Wöhner

Wöhner produces and distributes components in the field of utlity, specially eletricity. To transform their business into a digital-first unit, Spryker became their commerce backbone.

Biesterfeld

Biesterfeld, as one of the relevant suppliers in the chemical industry, released a transactional customer portal with Spryker to keep up with the needs and requirements of their customers.

About Spryker

Spryker is the leading composable commerce platform for enterprises with sophisticated business models to enable growth, innovation, and differentiation. Designed specifically for sophisticated transactional business, Spryker’s easy-to-use, headless, API-first model offers a best-of-breed approach that provides businesses the flexibility to adapt, scale, and quickly go to market while facilitating faster time-to-value throughout their digital transformation journey. As a global platform leader for B2B and B2C Enterprise Marketplaces, Thing Commerce, and Unified Commerce, Spryker has empowered 150+ global enterprise customers worldwide and is trusted by brands such as ALDI, Siemens, Hilti, and Ricoh. Spryker was recognized by Gartner® as a Visionary in the 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce and was also ranked as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: B2B Commerce Solutions, Q2 2022. Spryker is a privately held technology company headquartered in Berlin and New York. Find out more at spryker.com

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