Avanade’s latest research shows the "consumerisation" movement is shifting the sales process out of the control of the seller as enterprise buyers begin to mimic consumer shopping behaviors. With this shift, the value of the customer experience is now more important than price to business and IT decision-makers.
Customer experience now tops price as the most important factor in a buying decision by an enterprise decision-maker. Notably, business buyers are willing to pay up to 30% more for a product or service that offers an improved customer experience.
Businesses no longer have control over information shared about their products or services. 61% of business decision-makers report third-party sites and feedback from business partners, industry peers or social channels is more important than conversations with a company’s sales teams when making a purchasing decision.
To help navigate this change, companies are enlisting new people and departments to manage the customer experience. Compared to three years ago, customer service and call centers, IT and marketing are the leading groups now playing a larger role in the customer experience.
70% of respondents believe technology will primarily replace human interaction with customers in the next 10 years. Anticipating this change, businesses are making new technology investments, changing business processes and redesigning organisational roles. More than 80% of companies have changed at least one business process in the past three years to better interact with customers.
"The ‘consumerisation of IT’ is dramatically transforming the traditional ways companies sell products and services to other businesses and consumers," said Mick Slattery, Avanade executive vice president, Global Service Lines.
"Businesses have lost control of the sales process, and B2B and B2C buying models are merging. It’s no longer business-to-business or business-to-consumer – it’s business-to-everyone. Those businesses that understand the nature of today’s complicated customer relationships are creating longer-term and more lucrative relationships with customers."
This new global study builds on findings from Avanade’s Work Redesigned research conducted in January 2013. In this latest survey, Avanade found that businesses are changing processes to embrace the new business buyer and by increasing customer sales and support technologies (44%), increasing the number of employees interacting with customers (40%) and adding automation to the sales process (32%).
