Omnitracs' Road Ahead blog

Replace tricks for treats when serving B2C and B2B customers

Chris C
Chris Chappelear
Senior Product Marketing Specialist

It’s Halloween night, and your child is home with a broken leg. So, grabbing a candy bag and flashlight, you do what any caring parent would do and head out into the cold to ensure the night can still be sweet. Costume-less at the first house, you ring the bell while standing next to a pint-sized ghost. The door opens, and candy flows into the bag of the excited ghoul. The home-owner turns to you wearing a confused expression, then politely drops two chocolate bars into your bag. Definitely skipping this house next year.

Some transportation companies in the B2B space, such as dedicated fleet service providers, may get skipped next year too if they don’t focus on the needs of their client’s customers. Let’s look at why.

Your customers are always, always, always the end customers

In the B2C space, managing customer expectations can be fairly straightforward. You're a business providing a product or service to an individual who will directly utilize that product or service. But wait — is it any different in the B2B space? Some B2B providers may look at their space as the halfway point between businesses and individuals, but successful B2B providers think about their clients and how their product or service will affect their clients' customers. And if those customers aren’t satisfied — or if they’re given a sad, semi-empty bag of candy at the end of the night — the chances they'll come back to do business are slimmer.  

McKinsey and Company recently highlighted that customer-experience index ratings amongst B2B providers are significantly less than those of B2C providers. On average, B2C providers typically fell in the 65% to 85% range, and B2B providers found themselves in the < 50% range. As B2B audience expectations continue to rise, the percentage of satisfied clients will likely fall. If you’re a B2B provider, how can you use this eye-opening insight as a competitive advantage?  

For B2C and B2B, the treat is in the delivery tracking

Many in our industry are all-too-familiar with 'Where's my order?' and 'Where's my truck?' calls. These calls are costly, in terms of time and bottom-line expenses, to the teams taking them and frustrating to those having to make them. B2C providers, such as last-mile delivery companies, look to provide near real-time order updates that don’t require them to spend excess time on the phone, and B2B providers want to have the means to deliver those updates without excessive disruption to their operation.

Unlike in our candy analogy, a proactive delivery tracking solution leaves no one with less. Clients and customers can reap the benefits of modern delivery orchestration with custom notification settings and near real-time delivery and order updates.  Most importantly, they can provide and gain the visibility they need into the entire lifecycle of their orders, respectively.

An owner-operator with a small to mid-size, less-than-truckload operation can offer quality customer care and grow their business. A dedicated fleet service provider can give clients like grocery chains proactive notifications when an order is set to arrive, which they can then use to let customers know they’ll have those apples in stock soon. What stands out most about utilizing near real-time order arrival and ETA alerts is businesses big and small can benefit.

Be they clients or end-customers, proactive delivery tracking and notifications can help you take care of the people you serve. And that's a treat everyone can savor.

To learn about the benefits discussed in this blog post, check out Omnitracs Active Alert — the delivery tracking and status notification solution for B2B and B2C customers.