White Cap: B2B ecommerce, analytics & omnichannel challenges

[00:00:00] Anna Lazzarini: The biggest challenge that I've seen in terms of continuity behind the omnichannel experience is around pricing. So, people will see a price online, and they'll call their reps in an effort to get a better price. And if they do get a better price, then it just undermines the entire web experience, and you kind of coach your customers to go directly to their reps instead of using a self-service option.

[00:00:30] Kailin Noivo: Super excited for the podcast today with Anna. We get into everything analytics and product management related. We got a really good episode up ahead.

[00:00:37] Kailin Noivo: Welcome to another episode of the Ecommerce Toolbox Expert's Perspective. Joining us today, we have Anna Lazzarini, who's the Director of Customer Experience and Analytics for White Cap. So, really excited to have you on the show, Anna.

[00:00:51] Anna Lazzarini: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:52] Kailin Noivo: Anna, so you and I have known each other for a couple of years now from your time at MSC, but why don't you kick us off by talking to us a bit about your career journey and how you ended up heading up your department at White Cap?

[00:01:03] Anna Lazzarini: Sure. So, a quick note before we jump in. So, my views are my own, but in terms of my background, I've been in B2B ecommerce since 2014, starting in office supply. And since then, I've spent some time in industrial supply and, most recently, construction supply. And whenever I'm talking to anybody outside of the ecommerce world about what I do, which is almost all of my friends and family, generally, how I explain my job is that I help B2B companies grow by improving their customer experience.

[00:01:36] Kailin Noivo: That makes a bit of sense. And just to really kick us off, do you wanna maybe broadly define, what's the grandma kind of test or the six-year-old test for explaining what you do?

[00:01:48] Anna Lazzarini: That's, like, a good question. It's always tough. I mean, I would say I'm just helping the businesses grow by improving their customer experience, which, customer experience, like, if I had to distill it down, would be getting the right product to the right job site at the right time.

[00:03:06] Anna Lazzarini: If we're not getting the right product to a job site, that actually can cause delays. You end up draining your customers of their most precious assets, which is their time and their money.

[00:04:15] Anna Lazzarini: NPS is a classic. But I also like to look at order frequency at the account level and order fill rate. People don’t announce their departure—they slowly siphon off business elsewhere.

[00:05:36] Anna Lazzarini: One of the biggest challenges is defining the customer. In B2B, it varies by team and context.

[00:07:15] Anna Lazzarini: The ecommerce funnel still applies, but behavior is different. Metrics like cart abandonment need to account for approvals and workflows.

[00:09:26] Anna Lazzarini: Customers don’t give clean feedback. They say, “your search sucks.” That’s where session replay becomes critical.

[00:10:15] Anna Lazzarini: We had an intermittent login issue during a replatform. Only by combining feedback, session data, and business impact were we able to prove it.

[00:12:57] Anna Lazzarini: If reps give better pricing than online, you train customers to bypass your website entirely.

[00:14:30] Anna Lazzarini: Analytics is the wild west. My preference is fewer tools and one source of truth.

[00:17:49] Anna Lazzarini: To drive adoption, you have to partner with the field. Ecommerce is a tool—not a replacement.

[00:19:18] Anna Lazzarini: I’m focused on revamping the analytics stack to generate better insights.