82 Percent of B2B End-Buyers Expect Immediate Customer Service Responses

Credit: Getty Images by Luis Alvarez

According to research published on HubSpot, 82 percent of modern consumers expect an immediate response from brands on questions concerning marketing or sales. In addition, this group of respondents rated immediate response as very important regarding the businesses they choose to work with.

It’s not so much a matter of impatience, or that there is an overall lack of trust involved in modern B2B relationships, but rather the rise in digital technology that has made print buyers so anxious to receive immediate responses to all their customer service needs.

With an abundance of social media, email and live chat platforms for print companies to reach their end-buyers with, those end-buyers have in turn come to expect the prompt fulfillment of any and all needs or questions they might have.

That being said, it is now more important than ever for companies to have a dedicated customer service rep, or team thereof, whose responsibility it is to reply to social media or live chat inquiries as quickly as possible. And, if a company is willing and able to invest, there are options available through software platforms that employ cloud computing, chatbots, AI and machine learning that can help even the smallest of businesses to promptly and efficiently provide customer service to their end-buyers.

According to Jon Dick, who wrote the report, live chat is about much more than just directly communicating with customers, but rather streamlining all aspects of B2B communication and interaction. “That’s because the opportunity of live chat isn’t about live chat at all,” he wrote on HubSpot. “It’s about getting rid of the fault lines between your marketing, sales, and customer service teams so you can do business on your customers’ terms.”

Judging by his estimations—Dick reports that among today’s buyers, “immediate” means 10 minutes or less—print marketers would do best to make sure that they have the systems and staff in place to keep end-buyers engaged, informed and contented.

Look, we get it, the sheer number of platforms for communication available to businesses can be extremely daunting. From live chat to Facebook Messenger, CRM to email, Twitter and beyond, it seems like there are simply too many options to hone in on what works best. The trick is, however, to understand that end-buyers expect to communicate with, and be serviced by, companies through a variety of platforms. When you look at it that way, what seemed to be an impasse turns into a challenge, and suddenly “immediate” becomes an attainable standard. After all, if 82 percent of end-buyers expect something, you’d better be able to deliver.