As people have taken to their homes during the coronavirus outbreak, the capabilities of companies to offer customer service remotely has been brought into focus, with online chat interfaces growing in usage. It’s tempting to focus exclusively of such channels for B2C usage, but new research from the University of Eastern Finland reminds us not only that B2B customers are using them more frequently, but their requirements are very different to their B2C peers.
The researchers analyzed 157 chat dialogues between buyers and sellers at a SaaS services company to explore how social presence is constructed during technology-mediated communication.
“A lack of social presence can be one reason why a company’s online sales aren’t growing. Many companies want to invest in elements that ooze social presence, since anonymous, asynchronous and text-based technology-mediated communication can reduce the creation of trust between the parties,” the researchers say.
Customer expectations
For instance, the analysis revealed that new customers were often looking for direct solutions to their business problems. By contrast, existing customers were more interested in maintaining their customer relationship.
This then manifests itself into clear changes in the behavior and goals of customers during the online chat sessions. For instance, the new customers would often ask for more information about the services, or give feedback to the company. In the best case, they would choose to purchase the service or take the conversation in that direction.
By contrast, the longer-term customers would typically use the chat facility to obtain information, give feedback, book appointments and solve their problems. Often, they would simply use the chat facility to maintain the customer relationship with the company.
“Social presence plays a key role in e-commerce. Earlier studies have shown that social presence increases the customer’s trust in the website and in the seller, and it also provides support for the customer’s decision to purchase,” the researchers say.
