Whether you are selling to an individual through business-to-customer (B2C) services or to another company business-to-business (B2B), excellent customer service reigns supreme. While in the past that strictly meant the quality and training of the staff you hired, it now also comes down to your e-commerce platform. Your customer’s buying experience is only as good as the technology you provide to them. Take a look at some of the most important criteria to keep in mind when choosing the optimal b2b wholesale platform.
Make Your Products Available On Multiple Channels
Take advantage of this multi-tasking culture where information comes at customers from all over the map in order to optimize your sales. Your e-commerce solution should allow you to use social media, your online store, marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon and your mobile-friendly website. Because being a merchant on so many different channels can quickly become complex and overwhelming, you need an e-commerce solution that can seamlessly integrate everything into one hub. In short, automated data management in real time is not a luxury; it’s a necessity that you should demand of your e-commerce platform.
Integration With Third-party Applications
Much more than the actual purchasing process goes into a successful relationship with a wholesale customer. It also includes pre-purchasing research and marketing as well as personalization, order fulfillment, up-selling and cross-selling after the customer has bought the product. The e-commerce platform you pick should interface well with all of the other software you have already incorporated into your back office in order to consolidate the customer experience in its entirety.
Quick Customer Response Time
We can barely wait for a meal these days, so why should customers expect any different when it comes to wholesale B2B suppliers? That leaves you with an almost impossible challenge: finding the time to respond within minutes to anyone and everyone with a concern. Fortunately, your e-commerce solution can help by providing integration with live chat bots. These automated errand boys can send back an instant response and route people to the proper department. Linking your platform with Facebook Messenger can put you directly in touch in real time and can also furnish updated shipping dates without the need for direct personal contact.
Make Product Searches Easier
While people sometimes know exactly what wholesale product they are looking for, that isn’t always the case. Your e-commerce platform should be able to let you create your own search rules that make customer queries move more smoothly and quickly. The last thing you want to do is to lose that sale because of customer frustration.
Become Not Just Mobile-friendly But Mobile-optimized
Make your site do more than just work with a person’s phone in order to make those wholesale B2B purchases. Today’s e-commerce can actually make the mobile purchasing process comfortable and easy through a simplified checkout and payment process, integration with PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. and a one- or two-step buying procedure that enables customers to confirm preloaded data instead of needing to type it in every time.
Provide Flexible Pricing
When you sell B2B wholesale products, you have a wide variety of new and returning customers with different needs and pricing schedules. Some are first-time buyers; others use loyalty points; still more take advantage of coupons. What you need is a dynamic solution that lets you automate flexible pricing across several variables. Look for a wholesale B2B e-commerce platform that provides this feature.
In some ways, selling wholesale products isn’t that much different from being a merchant to individual customers. However, you can’t afford to miss out on the flexibility, features and pricing options that a good wholesale B2B platform can offer. Trust us when we tell you that choosing your solution with these criteria in mind will enable you to serve your customers better and become more efficient behind the scenes.