Modern CX Strategies for B2B Commerce
May 30, 2024 • 3 Minute Read • Thomas John, Commerce Practice Lead
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Rethinking B2B Digital Commerce: Why Self-Service Is the Growth Driver You Can’t Ignore
Jul 30, 2025 • 7 Minute Read • Mary Brown, Experience Strategy Lead, Commerce
Business-to-business buyers aren't who they used to be. They've been influenced by the convenience of Amazon's one-click magic, expecting the same digital autonomy and control they’ve grown accustomed to in their consumer lives.
- In fact, 67% of B2B buyers prefer self-service options over speaking to a sales rep.
- With ordering and reordering, 65% of B2B buyers prefer remote human interactions or self-service.
- And, buyers are 1.8x more likely to close a high-quality deal when they use self-service and digital sales tools, according to Gartner.
For manufacturers and distributors, the game has changed. Adopting self-serve dynamics means enabling customers to research, evaluate, purchase, and manage orders without relying on a sales representative or customer service at every step.
Every time a customer must call support, wait for a quote, or navigate complex approvals, it creates friction. And friction can kill momentum and deals. Today’s B2B buyers increasingly won’t tolerate slow or clunky processes (or they do so reluctantly and your customer satisfaction plummets).
Given buyer preferences, why has B2B self-serve lagged so far behind business-to-consumer (B2C)? It's because B2B is inherently more complex. Here's why:
- Multiple buying decision-makers, usually 5 to 16 stakeholders across up to four business functions (Gartner B2B Buying Report)
- Intricate sales cycles with customized business needs
- Higher transaction values that demand assurance
- Outdated "the way we've always done it" processes that emphasize in-person sales relationships
- Legacy systems that weren't exactly built to integrate with modern digital commerce platforms hinder seamless online experiences
In summary, these reliances have contributed to the slower adoption of self-service functionality.
Today's B2B buyer expects better. Demand is rising, and now there's a golden opportunity for your business to gain a competitive advantage by giving your customers the speed, control, and convenience they want.
Self-Service Strategies to Optimize Each Stage of the B2B Digital Commerce Customer Journey
Successful self-service implementation in a B2B environment requires looking beyond isolated features and considering how customer needs evolve across the entire journey. From the earliest stages of research to post-purchase support, each touchpoint presents an opportunity to reduce friction, empower buyers, and improve efficiency.
Below, we break down the key areas of the B2B customer experience ripe for self-service transformation and the capabilities that can drive impact at each stage.
1. Discovery/Evaluation Stage
At this stage, customers are identifying needs, comparing options, validating requirements, and exploring potential solutions.
Potential Self-Serve Opportunities:
- FAQs, Tutorials, Documentation & Videos – Equip customers to educate themselves before engaging with sales.
- Product Selectors/Configurators – Guide buyers to the right solution by tailoring complex products based on their needs.
- Product Comparison Tools – Help buyers evaluate features and specs across SKUs easily.
- Downloadable Spec Sheets & Certifications – Provide technical documents and assets for stakeholders to support internal validation.
- Search & Navigation Tools – Assist with robust search and filters to help users find relevant products quickly.
- Live Chat or AI Assistant – Offer real-time support to answer product-related questions instantly.
2. Purchase Stage
Buyers place quotes or orders, often involving internal coordination across multiple departments, roles, and approval or compliance workflows.
Potential Self-Serve Opportunities:
- Customer-Specific Pricing, Inventory, and Lead Times – Show visibility into real-time purchase terms and availability, as well as provide pricing transparency.
- Quote & Purchase Order Management – Enable users to build, edit, and approve quotes independently on demand, including multi-tiered role-based permissions and finance-approved thresholds.
- Self-Service Checkout – Let buyers complete their purchase without sales rep involvement.
- Saved Shopping Lists – Allow customers to collect, organize, and share items under consideration.
- Recurring Orders & Easy Reordering – Make it easy to replicate past purchases in a few clicks.
3. Post-Purchase Stage
After the sale, customers want seamless support, access to records, and tools for updates and continued engagement.
Potential Self-Serve Opportunities:
- Order Status & Tracking – Provide real-time updates on order fulfillment and shipping progress.
- Returns Management (RMA) – Let customers initiate and track returns without opening a support ticket.
- Order & Invoice History – Give customers' finance and operations teams direct access to self-serve past transaction data.
- Product Onboarding & Training Content – Offer content to help customers integrate your solution smoothly.
- Product Review or Feedback Submissions – Make it easy for customers to share insights on products and services through feedback loops to fuel continuous improvement and customer connection.
How to Build a Scalable Self-Service (or Hybrid) Experience Across the B2B Digital Commerce Customer Journey
Building a self-service experience in B2B isn't a plug-and-play task. Charting a path toward scalable self-serve capabilities requires a structured, cross-functional approach and planning.
Today’s B2B buyers want to be in control and choose how they interact, whether face-to-face, through a remote rep, or by handling things themselves online. That's why a hybrid, agile sales approach, supported by technology and optimized for a remote-first environment, is becoming essential. The outperformers in B2B are thriving because they're choosing innovative technology to support this flexibility.
Here's how to navigate the complexity with confidence.
1. Start with Buyer Journey Mapping
- Why it matters: You can’t build a relevant self-service experience if you don’t understand the collective buying tasks that buying teams are trying to accomplish at each stage.
- How to do it: Map the key tasks, pain points, and decision-makers across the full buying process (discovery, evaluation, purchase, and post-purchase).
- Pro Tip: Involve real customers, frontline sales and service reps to ensure it reflects real-world buyer behaviors, not assumptions.
2. Prioritize High-Impact Use Cases
- Why it matters: B2B self-service spans many potential touch points, and trying to do it all at once can stall progress.
- How to do it: Identify the most common, repetitive, or high-friction tasks (e.g., order tracking, reordering, pricing requests) and prioritize those.
- Pro Tip: Use data from your customer service team, customer relationship management (CRM) platform, and digital analytics to find “low-hanging fruit” that delivers quick wins.
3. Design for Hybrid Experiences
- Why it matters: Many B2B buyers want optionality—the ability for autonomy when they prefer it, and sales rep when they need it.
- How to do it: Build seamless handoffs between digital tools and human support (e.g., "request-a-quote" features, live chat with account manager).
- Pro Tip: Ensure your CRM and digital tools can support a shared and unified customer view across all channels.
4. Invest in Modular, Scalable Architecture
- Why it matters: B2B environments involve complex and custom pricing, inventory, workflows, and system integrations.
- How to do it: Choose a flexible platform architecture that can integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and product information management (PIM) systems without hardcoding workflows that limit flexibility.
- Pro Tip: Explore composable commerce or headless solutions to separate customer experience from backend complexity.
5. Enable Account-Level Personalization
- Why it matters: B2B buyers expect tailored catalogs, pricing, terms, and permissions based on their account.
- How to do it: Build account-based logic into your customer portals and ecommerce experiences that can support unique pricing, terms, product visibility, and user roles.
- Pro Tip: Use customer groups and roles to manage visibility and access with single sign-on (SSO) or login-gated portals for deeper capabilities.
6. Establish Clear Metrics & Feedback Loops
- Why it matters: Without measuring usage and value, you can’t improve or justify investment.
- How to do it: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) like self-service adoption, task completion rates, support deflection, customer satisfaction, or net promoter score (NPS), as well as revenue impact.
- Pro Tip: Gather quantitative analytics and qualitative feedback via in-app surveys or account reviews.
7. Orchestrate Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Why it matters: Self-service isn’t just a technology problem—it requires buy-in from sales, marketing, IT, operations, and customer service.
- How to do it: Form a cross-functional working group with stakeholders from each department to co-own the roadmap, prioritize features, manage rollout, and drive adoption.
- Pro Tip: Treat self-service as an ongoing, living product, not a one-time launch.
A Smarter Path to B2B Self-Service And Making Buying Easier for Your Customers
Modern B2B buyers expect more autonomy. They want to find answers, compare options, check pricing, and place orders without chasing down a sales rep or waiting days for a quote.
If your customer experience still depends on endless email threads, outdated portals, or a "talk to sales" button as the single call-to-action, you're frustrating the buyer and risking losing them to a competitor that delivers on today's expectations.
Let's be clear: Self-service isn't about replacing people. It's about removing the friction buyers don't want, so your team can focus where it counts.
And while B2B is more complex, that complexity is exactly why thoughtful self-service design creates value and delivers better business outcomes.
Start small and think big. Make it easier for your customers to choose you every time.
Have questions? Our commerce team is here to help you make your next move with the right tools and digital strategy.