In recent years we’ve all had a front row seat to B2B digital transformation, and it’s become clear that great B2B e-commerce shopping experiences don’t just happened. They require a strategic investment of time and money—and an understanding of the psychological factors that lead to experiential loyalty in business buyers.

While experiential loyalty has existed in the B2C world for decades, the B2B industry has now realized that delighting customers does not build loyalty. Instead, it is enough to reduce the buyer’s effort, or the work a buyer has to do to solve their problems. For today’s B2B customers, the “problem” to solve starts with the first purchase: Is it easy to do business with your company?

See also: The Convergence of B2B and B2C: How to Create Epic Experiences in an Experience-Driven Economy

More than half of B2B buyers have changed all their suppliers within a year

Most B2B companies derive a large portion of their revenue from ongoing sales to existing customers, making customer retention a key B2B priority. As human encounters are replaced by digital ones, sellers face the challenge of finding new ways to retain customers when the competition is just a click away.

In 2021, 55% of US-based respondents in a global survey said they had switched suppliers Everyone Company purchases in the 12 months prior to the survey. Another 41% said they had switchedsome Suppliers for some business purchases. With nine out of ten respondents switching providers, one can only conclude that great B2B shopping experiences are not happening and are likely to fall further behind as the digital age advances. Just a year earlier, in 2020, the comparable percentages were 20% for all purchases and 43% for some purchases.

Although the figures for 2022 are not yet known, it is safe to assume that B2B buyers will continue to have increasing expectations due to their B2C e-commerce habits. That’s why B2B leaders need to understand that today’s key differentiator is their organization’s ability to deliver the best possible B2B customer experience.

The customer’s effort counts much more than the joy

Gartner has extensively researched experience loyalty and evaluated whether customer satisfaction is an accurate predictor of future loyalty. Although counterintuitive, their conclusion is no. The data showed that 20% of customers who said they were “satisfied” also said they intended to buy from someone else. And the joy strategy doesn’t fare any better: “There was virtually no difference in loyalty between customers whose expectations were exceeded and those whose expectations were only met,” the report states. Instead, the true driver of customer loyalty is the effort it takes customers to resolve an issue: 96% of customers who had a high-effort experience reported being disloyal, compared to 9% with low-effort experiences .

As a leading company, we don’t want our customers to have any problems with our products or services. But it doesn’t take a “big” problem to make a customer feel like a company is difficult to do business with. Gartner identifies the top sources of customer effort as:

In fact, a “simple” customer inquiry can tell you whether your company is really easy to do business with.

See also: 12 Golden Rules for Customer Experience Strategy

B2B payments are complex, but the buying experience can be simple

When evaluating today’s B2B customer journey, many B2B buyers find the buying process complicated and time-consuming. Selecting a vendor can be difficult, and once selected, the onboarding process can take days (or even weeks in some industries), creating tremendous friction early in the customer experience. This segment of the customer journey has historically been a manual and paper-based system. In my experience, many companies “digitize” payments by adding online forms, which doesn’t improve or speed up manual substantiation.

Today’s buyers have much higher expectations and expect B2B e-commerce to be fully automated, instantly responsive and mobile-friendly. Additionally, corporate customers increasingly want more self-service account options that require robust portals or apps that allow them to access invoices, make payments, manage disputes, and more with just a few clicks.

Better B2B payments can remove much of the friction

Today, business growth is likely to include new digital channels such as e-commerce, marketplaces, and more. And while B2B customers are enjoying these new channels, they still want to shop the way they always have, with contracts, purchase orders (POs), and invoices. Why? Because contracts often contain special prices and other negotiated terms, and the purchase orders and invoices are necessary to manage company expenses.

Because of this, digital channels designed to deliver a great B2B customer experience must include all of the complexity demanded by buyers and their organizations. The key is that complicated installation must sit behind a sleek, simple checkout experience.

The good news is that the days of creating these digital solutions in-house are long gone. Instead, B2B merchants can connect to an existing B2B payments and invoicing network specifically designed to reduce many of the challenges companies face when striving to improve customer loyalty. These proven B2B payment providers offer:

• Real-time trade credit decision in moments, not days, tying in potential buyers once they have made a decision to purchase

• Properly sized corporate credit accounts

• Automated accounts receivable to support new customer acquisition and onboarding

• Digital invoices in formats easily digestible by enterprise systems

• Fraud detection and mitigation when making trade credit decisions

Also see: The ultimate secret to building a loyal customer base

A modern B2B payment process can create experiential loyalty

It’s the new reality: Most B2B buyers don’t want help during the “sales process” unless they ask for it. Instead of relying on salespeople to build strong relationships, companies need to strengthen customer loyalty in other ways. Investing in a simpler payment experience is an excellent place to start.

Many businesses see their online payment experience as purely mechanical – it works or it doesn’t – and in the past they’ve largely been right. But whether you like it or not, today’s digital world is very different. With a world of merchants at their fingertips, shoppers know they have a choice and will quickly do business elsewhere. Because of this, suppliers who set up a customer-centric checkout designed to provide B2B buyers with an experience that is neither complicated nor time-consuming can gain a significant competitive advantage. According to McKinsey, B2B companies that transformed their customer experiences saw 10% to 15% revenue growth, higher customer satisfaction, improved employee satisfaction and a 10% to 20% reduction in operational costs.

Businesses of all sizes can leverage this type of technology to their strategic advantage, where loyalty-building B2B payment experiences are just a few APIs away. A comprehensive payment solution can significantly reduce the friction that new buyers face. Investing in an effortless onboarding process can create a memorable relationship starter, build experiential loyalty, and differentiate your business—all the result of strategically investing time and money to create a great B2B ecommerce experience.