Ask your contractor customers what you can do to make their lives easier and they’ll tell you they want more convenient shopping tools and a personalized user experience – especially when they’re out in the field. These hardworking, independent business owners don’t have time to scroll through your online catalog or call their sales rep to find products. They want efficiency tools that enable them to easily find and purchase the products they need, place quick reorders, get fast quotes, and check their order status from wherever they are. Many of today’s B2B eCommerce providers offer customer tools like account portals, quick order pads, and check-out options standard with their platforms. But, as technology and B2B buyer expectations evolve, distributors must consider providing more than just the “standard” offerings to attract new customers and keep their current customers content.
Go hybrid or go bust
If you’re a distributor looking to enhance the customer experience, start by adopting a hybrid sales model – one that provides buyers self-service eCommerce capabilities with the option to interact with sales reps. Hybrid selling is growing in popularity in the wholesale distribution industry and is expected to be the most dominant sales strategy this year, according to McKinsey & Associates. Temper any concerns that online self-service tools will downplay your sales team’s importance. These tools are meant to provide efficiencies to businesses as well by shifting the more routine orders and questions away from your sales reps so they can focus on doing more consultative solution selling and building deeper customer relationships.
Efficiency tools built for customers on the go
At Unilog, we’ve developed B2B eCommerce solutions designed for use wherever and whenever your customers need them – whether it’s at a job site, in their vehicle, or at the office. Here are four efficiency tools we offer that are particularly helpful out in the field:
1. My Favorites List
With our My Favorites feature, customers can access a list of their most frequently bought items from their account portal on your website or via a widget which can be added to the homepage. This tool allows you or the customer to build and save a list of specific items they can add to their shopping cart with a click of a button. Many of our eCommerce platform clients set up an initial My Favorites list for their customers based on their purchase history. With their personalized list already built and ready for them to access the first time they log in to your website, our clients say My Favorites is a great way to drive site adoption.
2. Vendor Inventory Management (VMI) Tool
It’s not uncommon for contractors to run out of supplies while working on a job. Finding a part, ordering it, and picking it up (if it’s needed immediately) takes time, which contractors don’t have. Our VMI tool prevents these mishaps and ensures your contractor customers maintain a proper stock level of the items they regularly use. Here’s how it works: First, customers go into the VMI tool to set quantity thresholds and replenish amounts for their stock items. Then, when they enter their current quantities on hand, the tool calculates the additional stock needed to meet their replenish quantity and adds the items to their cart where they can then place their order. Integrated with your eCommerce site, the VMI tool helps your customers reduce costs from overstocking while making sure they always have sufficient inventory on hand.
3. Product Groups
For a quicker path to purchase, group items with multiple sizes, colors, or finishes together so that they display as one product with available options on your website. A sophisticated PIM tool integrated with your eCommerce platform makes product groupings possible and lets you present your entire product catalog in a cleaner, streamlined manner so that customers don’t have to scroll through pages of products to find the specific item they need. Watch out for PIM imposters that are no more than glorified databases. Unilog’s dedicated PIM solution has been deemed a “best-in-breed” by industry analysts for its flexibility, scalability, and customization capabilities. Whether you sell connectors, fasteners, work wear, or fittings, product groups simplify product selection with clickable dropdown lists displaying the available sizes, colors, and any other differentiating attributes for an item. The customer then chooses the item they want and adds it to their cart.
4. Mobile App
To survive in this competitive market, you must make your company available to customers 24/7. There’s no better way to do that than to be accessible on a mobile device. While a responsive-designed eCommerce site ensures a consistent shopping experience on any device a customer uses, a mobile app adds more features and functionality buyers can’t get with your mobile-friendly website. Unilog’s hybrid mobile app gives your buyers multiple ways to shop, purchase, and engage with your business leveraging capabilities only available on their mobile device. They can use their phone’s camera to scan a barcode to find an item, take a picture of a product and perform an image search for the same or similar item in your catalog, and, with the phone’s voice-enabled technology, they can speak directly into the mobile app to find items from your store and get instant product results. A mobile app is the ultimate efficiency tool for busy buyers on the move.
Grow your customer base and revenue with more digital tools
If you’re focused on serving your customers, then you need to embrace hybrid selling and add more value-added features to your digital offerings – features that save the customer time, simplify their path to purchase, and are easy to access. By combining customer service assistance with self-service ordering tools, you give buyers the freedom they want with the assurance they need to make a sound purchase. We’ve mentioned four tools that simplify the path to purchase but there are more you can implement to help grow your customer base and generate more revenue. If you’d like to learn about additional customer-centric tools and features you can integrate into your digital sales channel, join us for our upcoming webinar Tuesday, April 30 at 2 PM EST. for this free webinar today!