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Distinctly Different

The manner in which the B2B and B2C customers decide to buy a product or a service clearly sets them apart from one another. A company, as a buyer, is very likely to go through a process of recognizing a need, drawing product or service specifications, soliciting proposals, making a selection on the basis of some key parameters including price, quality, vendors’ background and the timeline commitment. Again, depending on whether one is buying some capital equipment, consumer durables, or consumable material the extent of scrutiny may vary. Likewise, whether one wants to get into a consulting contract or make an outsourcing arrangement, the buyer would like to examine relevant details. Once a decision is made, it would invariably end up in a formal contract.

Depending on the value of a purchase, an individual consumer would also carry out some informal research. For instance buying a house, a car or a computer, one would ‘google’ for comparison of various features and seek friends’ advice, interact with dealers and come to an ultimate decision. All this exercise, aimed at weighing performance and financial risks occurs fairly fast. And yet the buyer’s perception of social and ego risks as well as impulsive preference play a major part in shaping one’s decision. Many low-value, day to day purchases of goods and services are made to suit personal convenience or a spirit of exploration and are almost akin to walk-in purchases.

In view of the above and with deeper understanding of the procedures and psychology of the buyers in both categories companies find it necessary to formulate marketing strategies that are substantially different.

Post-Decision: Substantially Alike

Having zeroed in on a particular outfit for buying a service or a manufactured product the customer has struck a relationship with a number of expectations. It is at this point at which the difference between the B2B and B2C customers comes to an end. There is a strong commonality of expectations both from B2B and B2C customers that the companies’ policy approaches to deliver quality service has to be formulated on the same basic tenets. Both B2B and B2C customers rightfully expect that:

• All the tangibles—whether they are delivered instantly as in the case of a retail purchase, produced and consumed almost simultaneously as in a restaurant or whether they are delivered according to committed time schedule—must meet expected quality standards.
• Should it be necessary to seek some help for rectification of a default the company would attempt to under­stand customer’s needs with empathy, pay individualised attention and show reasonable sense of caring.
• The company’s employees would display a matured approach, technical competence, self-confidence and courtesy that evokes trust in the company.
• The company would show high degree of ‘responsiveness’ — the willingness to help and provide prompt service, flexibility in dealing with a situation and ability to deal with service recovery with professionalism.

There is another reason why companies should place B2B and B2C customers at the same pedestal if they wish to deliver superior customer service aimed at enhancing customer engagement. And it is this reason that, largely, raises the comparison controversy.

Most B2B companies, errone­ously believe that people get emotional only when they make pur­chases for themselves. ‘When they buy for their companies they are primarily concerned with objective factors such as price, speed, and efficiency.’ The well-known opinion poll company, Gallup, discovered in customer engagement surveys involving thousands of business-to-business (B2B) relationships that this conventional wisdom ‘is probably completely and dangerously wrong’. They found only 35% of the customers were either fully or mildly engaged and the reason why ‘such a small percentage of B2B customers are emotionally engaged is because only a small percentage of B2B companies focus on engaging’ them.[i]

It is true that the specifics of the transactions would vary from product to product and service to service, yet, as my empirical research revealed—used as source material for book Organisational Schizophrenia: Impact on Customer Service Quality  www.gkgureja.com —the service failures or more particularly, the reasons for disconnect between policy and practice emanate from the same operational areas and they apply equally to B2B and B2C customers. The root causes for policy-practice disconnects are common: (1) organisationally induced distortion in employees’ perceived self-interest caused by obsessive pursuit of short term gains and (2) the lack of culture of discipline even at the top management level.