We consider the rapid changes taking places in the competitive use of integrated B2B communications, including the fast evolving roles of email and instant messaging alongside essential face to face and telephone contact.

The tipping point?

It’s fair to say that monarchies don’t ever die. Individual monarchs may do so but it takes a revolution rather than death to change fundamentals. A change of reign may make a difference as to how the monarchy conducts itself, but the fundamental nature of the monarchy remains unchanged.

In the same way business to business (B2B) and person to person communications are now at a tipping point – but what revolution is underway and which winners will emerge?

Email is perhaps the most pervasive method of communication in the B2B world, having almost completely supplanted physical post by volume. Physical letters are increasingly used simply as documents of record, where legally required, or where there is more than the information content of the post to send and an electronic substitute has yet to arrive – for example the delivery of business credit cards. Where possible any ‘physical’ letters are usually sent as attachments to emails, speeding and assuring delivery and avoiding the business impact of postal stoppages!

As so often though (just as with monarchies), it is only once email seems to have defeated all challengers that new and revolutionary challenges appear and decline begins.

Email constrains us

The advent of email is fairly recent, but it is already constraining us. It may be a surprise to realise just how recently email has emerged and become pervasive. It is less than ten years ago (1999) when email began to surpass physical post and in the US e-Marketer reported that the US postal service delivered 206bn items of post compared to 536bn emails. B2B marketing by post I still significant, accounting for about half the US postal services traffic.

Email is a pre-internet technology. It began as an electronic form of the external post and the office memo system and has kept many of their design characteristics. So, for example, it is inherently an asynchronous form of communication. You do not need to worry whether the recipient is on-line or not. Email content is text and now image based too, with perhaps the attachment of other document types such as spreadsheets. Email is not a dynamic medium, but as something that evolved out of the world of slow modems where dynamism was not a concern of the time.

B2B desktops: where next?

It seems that the email system has become the default B2B productivity ‘portal’ as most B2B professionals spend more time using this communication system than any other. Although email offers only asynchronous communication it seems completely complementary to the face to face and telephone conversations that the more mature generation of B2B professionals are used to. Not only can you leave a detailed question or response for someone who is not contactable right now, email can often provide just the right level of communication formality and detail, with an easy-to-file audit trail of course.

Most of us see face-to-face time as critical to building B2B relationships, to win and retain business. However too much time in the office or chained to your computer reduces the time you can be out with clients and prospects, or even enjoying a glass of wine with them! If email and other electronic contact methods are used wisely as productivity tools, then time can be preserved (or even increased) for meetings with clients. Time spent away from communicating with clients, whether email, phone or in person is increasingly seen as unproductive ‘down time’.

Although B2B professionals sometimes complain about the number of emails they have to handle, they still prefer this to entering data into administration systems! Many more companies are creating data entry templates as emails, these can be part-filled with as much data as you decide, then completed directly by the customer or your staff, and finally transferred to mainframe systems in XML interchange formats.

High performance internet

The arrival of the high performance internet is now fundamentally changing many of the assumptions around which email was designed. The new issue today is whether to communicate asynchronously (email, SMS or RSS) or synchronously (instant messaging (IM), voice or video) alongside traditional communications.

The new generation entering the workforce has grown up with these mediums and for them using email alone can represent a constrained way of doing things. There is now a need to integrate all these communications and administration activities into a common approach, probably around what is today the email desktop.

A rare best practice example

Instant messaging, online chat and shared screens are all enhancements that are already in use. For example at www.drltd.com B2B clients and prospects can enter an instant message or a call back request for a sales or service conversation, these are automatically allocated to sales staff and the client is called back almost immediately, perhaps to arrange a first meeting. At the same company emails are treated as communications opportunities to excel, with priority emails creating instant call backs to the customer, rather than joining a backlog for 7 to 10 day response! Users struggling to complete web forms or to find the online information they need can be identified and pro-actively offered real-time messaging or telephone support to complete their transaction. 
 
How different this example is from the B2B communication norms we experience today. More often companies only contact you when they have something to push, answering phones only when they have to and leaving email responses at least as long as those we experience for letters. Even when instant messaging or call back is available on the website, how often is it staffed and available? In these situations it is not clear that the board sees customer communications as value-add, or as a way to retain and grow business. Perhaps they are not aware of the proven and low risk business cases for integrated communications that are used by the few B2B leaders?

The role of the board

The ‘role of the board’ is a personal theme and perspective we like to consider for each of these topics. Clearly the board must be sufficiently informed to decide why it’s worth investing effort and resource. Being accessible to clients and providing an exceptional customer experience has become essential in supporting most B2B growth. Boards are increasingly able to access client research that proves where the brand promise is not delivered, where the client journey breaks down and where it would pay to improve.

The board has a central and ongoing role in the development and cascade of a clear and integrated communications strategy, showing ‘why it needs to happen’ and allocating the joined-up responsibilities and resources to deliver noticeable outcomes.

Of course your alliances (whether suppliers or distributors) must become part of the same joined-up approach in providing the service that your clients experience. Key alliances need to receive clear direction from board level contact, where clarification of their delivery role can then be developed into clear service level agreements.

The opportunity is with us today and a few are already developing as exceptional B2B examples for integrated communications. Perhaps it is disappointing that others cannot yet see the blindingly-obvious business case to move forward more strongly.

By Alex Noble and Bryan Foss

About the authors

Alex has worked as a contact centre agent, consultant and IT Architect at various points in his career.  He currently works for Cisco Systems and prior to that worked for one of the world's largest IT firms, leading their contact centre solutions portfolio for the banking industry. One of his current areas of interest is how the growth of web 2.0 technologies will impact contact centre.

How to contact Alex: alnoble@cisco.com and http://www.cisco.com/go/cc

Bryan Foss is an independent board level advisor and non-executive director, founder of http://www.fossinitiatives.com and previously an executive with IBM.  

Email Bryan at bryanfoss@gmail.com.