Creating a positive co-operation climate is of course necessary to get positive and thus long-term business relationships. The positive cooperation environment requires that everyone has access to relevant information and feel they are in control of what is happening. So what information is important to your customers?
Start from the customers point of view
A common mistake companies make is that it is not based on the customer's day when they design your communication. What is natural for the supplier in terms of how products, services and deliveries go to can often be more diffuse to the customer.
Imagine the customer's everyday life. What is the meaning of the products and services you deliver to the customer? Is it something that the entire customer's business is centered around or is it actually only a small part of what they have to deal with.
If your relationship is a small part of the customer's business, it is likely that customers have less time and opportunity to familiarize themselves with the specific concepts etc.
The business cycles
What is your business relationship with the customer over time? Do you work in projects or is there a continuous flow of orders and deliveries? Does the customer need information about deliveries carried out earlier?
Are the goods and services you deliver generic or are there unique information about each delivery that is interesting to the customer?
Define the roles of the customer in your cooperation
In B2B, there are often many people at the customer who are interested in information. For example, it may be in the form of financial department, purchasers and different types of end users. How does this look like your customers?
By defining the roles of your customers and their interests (when it comes to interaction with your company) it becomes clearer what information is requested by who and when this happens. By preventing this, by always ensuring that the customer is properly informed on time, the risk of the customer feeling unnecessary insecure is avoided.
Use the same language
In most industries, a professional language is created that is completely natural for anyone who works in this industry. But your customers are often in a completely different industry and therefore have less reason to use or understand industry-specific terms.
This may include details about the product or service you provide, as well as descriptions of the delivery itself.
Studies show that misunderstandings about, for example invoices, often have to do with the recipient not understanding what is being billed. That such a misunderstanding lead to a deterioration, of course, is both unfortunate and at the same time unnecessary.
One idea may be to define a phrasebook of different industry-specific terms that you use in your communication. What would the people in the different roles of the customer use for words on these?
As a supplier, you have two options to improve the prerequisite for avoiding misunderstandings, training the customer or attempting to adjust the choice of words to the language the customer uses.
In case the company has a well-visited website (by the existing customers) or if the customer uses a customer portal to access information, it is a good place to provide informative descriptions of how you work with explanations of the industry terms that you need to use in your business communication.
When does the customer need information?
Imagine the customer's everyday life. For example, when they receive an invoice referring to a delivery that occurred a few weeks earlier of a product that they don’t remember when and how it was ordered. They must now take a position on this invoice and might feel the uncertainty surrounding it.
Probably, all the documentation is available for you in your business system. But how is the situation for the customer? Since this may be one of many different orders the customer has made with several different suppliers, all of which work in different ways, the risk is that this the customer finds it hard to keep track of everything.
If the customer is to do his job, then a detective work must be initiated, and new issues can arise. By anticipating when the customer needs information and stay ahead, chances are that you can maintain his confidence.
If you want support in defining your information flow, please feel free to use our example template for business information.
Please read more regarding the gain of freeing time for your customers.