Managing Customers | | Published October 26, 2018

Choosing the Best B2B and B2C Help Desk Software for You

Far too often, companies are forced into a solution that doesn’t meet the needs of their business. You don’t want to use an exhaustive enterprise tax software for your individual filing, nor does a corporate audit business want to be forced into using software focused on personal finance. The needs of a consumer and business are unique and very different.

With this said, let’s look at how these specific needs apply to a different type of software – help desk software – so you can determine whether a B2C or B2B software better fits your goals and objectives…

B2C focuses on contacts, B2B on contacts AND companies – This is one of the most vital and important distinguishing factors between B2C and B2B help desk software. Solutions built primarily for B2C teams will place all their focus on each contact and moving their issue towards resolution. Help desk software built for B2B will focus on contacts, but it was built at its core to focus on companies and business relationships. The difference is that a B2B solution truly monitors the customer health of every single business relationship, not just an individual contact here and there.

B2C must resolve issues quickly, B2B must provide the right answer – While timeliness is important in B2B as well, the consequences for being wrong are much more severe than its B2C counterpart. If a wireless company loses a single consumer because of a mistake they don’t blink an eye, but losing a 10,000-user contract is of critical concern. This means that choosing a help desk software built for B2B is essential because you need to get the right answer, right away. This type of software makes it easy to loop in people from other departments to expedite the resolution process.

Click here to download our infographic comparing B2B and B2C customer support!

B2C relies more on self-service and mobile, while the personal touch holds more value in B2B – There is certainly still value and demand for more “high tech” solutions in B2B (and it keeps growing), but generally B2C remains the innovator when it comes to help desk technology. With this said, B2B customers often skip the chat bot that B2C consumers love and reach out to their designated representative instead. Simply put, a B2B customer doesn’t have the time to mess with automated chat bot responses to get the right answer, and instead they opt for an individual at the business that knows their company and understands their needs. Businesses don’t want to call a general hotline and wait on hold for twenty minutes to get an unfamiliar agent, instead they want a single point of contact that they can reach out to at any time.

 

In short, B2C help desk software emphasizes simplicity and immediacy, with a focus on singular interactions. B2B help desk software, on the other hand, places more importance on providing the right answer in a personable way to maintain a positive customer relationship. We hope this analysis helps in selecting the software you need!