Customer journey becomes customer experience

CRM systems are an important prerequisite for creating a positive customer experience. 81 percent of companies say that the use of a professional customer database has a positive impact on sales.

This is one of the findings of the study "Digital transformation lifts the customer to the throne," which Telekom Deutschland conducted together with market researchers from Techconsult.

Increasingly dynamic markets confront companies with the challenge of serving multiple sales channels. Instead of focusing solely on the point of sale, it is important to network all communication channels with each other - also in the B2B area.

A market-leading, cooperatively organized distributor of roofing products has therefore had a B2B store implemented on its website that displays available products to its members, taking into account individually negotiated price conditions.

These can be ordered directly online - also via an EAN code scan from the construction site - and delivered or picked up at the nearest store. At the same time, the solution can be used as a work platform by allowing customers to create shopping lists, for example. SAP Commerce is the basis for the technical development and implementation.

The store based on SAP Hybris Commerce (now SAP Commerce) was designed as an intuitive work platform where craftsmen can, for example, create different shopping lists for their respective construction sites.

In addition, customers can see all their orders, inquiries, quotes and invoices in the store via document view - even those that were created offline. All offers can also be ordered directly from the online store.

Roofers know DE Süd (Roofing Purchasing) as an expert for all roof-related issues. The roofing specialist offers its customers more than one hundred thousand available articles.

Previously, craftsmen could find out about available products and product groups on the company's website, but to place orders they had to travel to one of the branches. Up to date? Certainly not.

In order to position itself for the future, the company wanted to expand its website to include a web store, thus combining stationary and online business.

"It was important to us that we didn't just set up an online store that ran parallel to the stationary business in the branches, but that we wanted to closely interlink the two"

explains Bernhard Scheithauer, Member of the Board of DE Süd.

The information and purchasing behavior of customers as well as the demands on the purchasing process have changed massively in recent years. The focus is no longer solely on selling a product to customers, but also on creating a positive buying experience.

The purchase experience, also known as the customer experience, describes the overall experience that the customer has with a provider or brand. At each individual point of contact on the customer journey, the provider or brand must be tangible for the customer. Only in this way can the provider or brand stand out from the competition in the long term.

Amazon is a pioneer in this field. Customers expect comprehensive support on their customer journey, from the provision of information to service. They also want to stand out from the crowd and demand individual offers tailored to their person or company.

30 percent of the companies surveyed by Techconsult consider personalization of campaigns to be important, but only 23 percent have implemented this satisfactorily. Individual product or service design by the customer using a configurator is considered important by 28 percent of respondents. Twenty-one percent have implemented it well.

"We wanted to serve the omnichannel theme properly, and this is where Medienwerft and FIS stood out with very innovative ideas among the other vendors who thought too short of the mark for our liking"

recalls Franz Kolbeck from DE Süd.

At the same time, the roofing dealer was also wondering whether it really wanted to make this investment.

As is customary in the B2C sector, B2B companies have also long had to distinguish themselves sharply, and this can only be done through the brand. What does the brand look like? How does it feel? These are questions that a traditional system house has to answer.

Medienwerft, on the other hand, as an experienced e-commerce agency in the SAP environment, can boast concept designers, UX designers and creation. "With this unique mix of technical know-how in the SAP field and creative and conceptual expertise, Medienwerft and FIS won the race," explains Oliver Wiese, IT at DE Süd.

The expectations of the roofing specialist dealer have been fulfilled: On the one hand, the brand "Roofing Purchasing" was very well elaborated. In addition to the adoption of proven functionalities such as registration for craftsmen, numerous different ordering options - via search or from the history - were implemented.

Alternatively, orders can also be initiated by scanning EAN codes on the respective pallet directly via smartphone from the construction site.

"The focus of the deliberations was on the questions: What does a roofing company need? What does a specialist dealer need?"

reports Oliver Helms, Managing Director of Medienwerft.

"One of the challenges was to seamlessly integrate the store platform with DE Süd's SAP-based enterprise resource planning system, from which the prices that the respective specialty retailers call for the products are pulled in real time."

This was a challenge primarily because - depending on which quotas the roofer has negotiated in each case for drilling machines and the like - different prices have to be displayed. The system must therefore know that customer A is shown different prices than customer B, who in turn is shown different prices than customer C.

"There are a lot of interfaces behind that that pull in that information"

Helms explains.

"In addition, there is an authorization concept behind it: If I log in as a foreman, different document conditions apply than for an apprentice who may be allowed to view purchase orders."

And of course, the familiar integration of a classic SAP system such as R/3 is still missing today. The missing integration must therefore still be filled by the SAP partners with numerous interfaces. The extent to which this concept will be releasable in the future and compatible with a coming C/4 is not foreseeable.

The use of a modern CRM system and the associated automation of marketing, sales and service can of course significantly improve the customer experience, as Techconsult also knows.

While traditional customer relationship management was designed to manage customer data efficiently and clearly, today you want to actively seek dialog with each individual customer across channels.

Digitization is leading to a multitude of new contact points between the company and its customers, be it social media, company blogs or video chats.

It is important to provide the right information in the right form at the right time and through the right channel so that customers can view it conveniently and at any time.

CRM systems are the basis for creating buying experiences in which the customer gets the feeling that their wishes and needs are the focus.

With the use of a modern CRM system, a 360-degree view of the customer can be created, which, through rapid analyses, provides derivations for the right approach and individual offer creation, thereby improving the buying experience of the individual customer.

With a professional CRM system, such as the one SAP is planning for the coming years with C/4, it will be possible to generate buying experiences that are remembered from the moment the information is obtained, through the purchase, to the service, and that exceed the customer's expectations.

Data analysis alone is not sufficient for this, Techconsult emphasizes in a CRM study. What is needed are innovative solutions that allow customers to be addressed individually via various channels based on the available data. In the future, intelligent assistants will guide customers through the purchasing process on the web.

Cross-selling rates, i.e. sales rates for suitable additional or complementary products, can thus be increased and customer churn reduced.

Professional services can enhance the supplier or brand image and customer loyalty. If questions arise about service or the goods received, there are quick and uncomplicated ways to provide comprehensive support, for example via chat with customer service, interactive forums directly on the website or triggering a callback by customer service. 81 percent of companies say that CRM solutions positively influence the response time to customer questions.