Bulbs.com Is Driving Success Through Better Customer Communication

Information is power as the old adage goes and when customers are dealing with a B2B brand they want to be confident they have access to all the info they need to effectively strategize.

Remember, when you’re carrying out business as a B2B retailer, your customers have customers of their own. That means, the manner in which you carry out your business has a direct impact on your customers’ ability to carry out theirs.

Communication is always key, and brands need to make sure they have channels through which customers can get regular updates on their orders and find out if there are any changes or delays they need to be aware of so they can pass that information along to their own customers.

Bulbs.com

One of the nation’s biggest B2B lighting distributors, Bulbs.com has been servicing over 185,000 businesses in more than 300,000 locations since the turn of the millennium. In that time, the ecommerce trailblazer has discovered how important communication is to driving its impressive growth.

It achieves superior customer communications by making sure its ecommerce operation and its human sales teams and leverage the two to complement one another. Sales reps are able to gather customer feedback for example and feed that information back to the ecommerce IT team who can then implement changes.

"While listening to customer feedback, Bulbs.com proactively adds features like downloadable tech specification materials or capabilities like emailing shopping carts to ensure the customer experience is smooth and fast," said Vice President of Ecommerce, Gregg Walker. "In addition, Bulbs is building tools on its website to help sales representatives access inventory records and give customers estimates of project costs and long-term benefits."

And this focus on providing customer with better interaction through a hybridized sales and ecommerce team is yielding great results as well. In 2021, top-line growth, including website and call center sales, grew 21% over the previous year. In addition, Bulbs.com experienced a 31% growth in 2021 total sales over 2019, as web sales alone grew 13-15%.

Communication

Bulbs.com has noticed that larger B2B projects it’s involved in require even deeper levels of communication between itself and its customers. And it’s in these moments the hybridization really shows its benefits.

"We’ve seen that with larger B2B projects, there is more customer assistance needed from our certified specialists because those projects come with more technical specifications, potential rebate opportunities, and application-specific concerns," said Walker. "It all starts with the website but often ends with our team’s lighting expertise."

Reps in the sales team can easily access important information such as return-on-investment estimates, which are particularly useful for large retrofitting projects. These estimates factor in rebates, which provides a tempting lure for customers as it helps offset the initial costs of retrofitting their facility’s lighting. Commercial sales representatives also have easy-to-navigate online access to inventory information, which lets them quickly and accurately answer customer questions on the spot.

Bulbs.com serves both the B2B and B2C spaces and the spike in DIY customers seen across the industry during the COVID-19 crisis has also made this innovative brand reconsider how it communicates important product information to these two audiences.

We all have a tendency, when talking about a subject we’re deeply knowledgeable about, to throw out a lot of jargon which may be second nature to us but comes across as complete gobbledygook to a layperson. To solve this issue, Bulbs.com makes sure its communications and literature are as free from jargon as possible and melds technical and non-technical information in a manner which can be easily understood by all audiences.

Bulbs.com also makes sure customers can self-serve and access important information without having to go through the process of contacting customer service.

"Customers said they wanted to download technical specifications off the Bulbs.com website as a PDF, for instance, so the company added that feature," said Walker. "Customer feedback also led Bulbs.com to let customers email a shopping cart to a supervisor, making it easier for them to get approval for purchases. After coordinating with its merchandising team, Bulbs.com often adds features to improve the overall customer experience. For example, the latest addition to its mobile website includes the ability for customers to use Apple Pay at checkout."

Final Thoughts

By bringing its sales teams and ecommerce department together, Bulbs.com has created an effective two-way street through which information can flow – customer feedback in one direction and key communications in the other – which makes the whole business more agile and better able to adapt to changing trends and needs.

Hybridizing ecommerce and sales is sure to be part of the conversation at B2B Online Orlando 2022, taking place in November at the JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort & Spa, FL.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.