Seven signs your B2B customer sign-in is off track

If your customers are other companies – not individual consumers –how easy is it for their users to sign in? How can you tell where your B2B customer sign-in experience stands?

Here are some tell tale signs you may be ready for a customer identity access management (CIAM) upgrade:

1. The customer journey includes off-line detours

Manual customer onboarding processes can be frustrating and error-prone, similar to sending customers down a rocky path with dead ends.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍Walk through the process like you were the end user. Identify the manual bottlenecks. Then, to quantify what the manual workarounds are costing you, track down things like the number of customer complaints, password reset requests, and help desk calls related to your customer portal.

2. Lack of delegated administration options leave your super admins exhausted

Most CIAM solutions weren’t built for B2B scenarios and custom interfaces cost money, take time and are hard to change.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍Poll your customer CIAM admins. They’ll give you straight talk.

3. You’ve got a hunch your customers’ former employees still have access

Your customer portal is an external system. So, chances are IT doesn’t know employees have access to it and miss turning off access when an employee leaves.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍Review how many users at each customer haven’t logged in for 90+ days. If they’re not using their access, they probably don’t need it. Another way is to spot check with a few customers. Give them a list of inactive users and have them compare with employee status.

4. Users have more access than they should

Most of the security world is moving towards a Zero Trust approach and CIAM is no exception. Zero Trust starts with securing the identity and then granting the least amount of access the user needs.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍Reach out to a few admins at your customers. They’ll give you a clear sense of whether the system gives them sufficiently granular control.

5. You wait (and wait) for engineering to make changes

If your CIAM solution is developer-centric, which means any customization requires coding. Then you’re likely often left on hold – waiting for your requests to be tackled.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍Check your email or ticketing system. Find the last three requests and see how long it took from request to go-live.

6. When users sign in, they get a generic experience

A good sign-in journey is one that brings you to your desired destination with the fewest steps possible. By delivering end users directly to the right version of your website that reflects your customer’s brand.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍This one is straightforward. Either users get a tailored experience or it’s one-size-fits-all.

7. Customers can’t figure out how to sign in

Sad but true, this one isn’t always obvious. Problem sites fall at different ends of the spectrum. Some display too many sign-in options. Others have no customer sign-in button at all.

WHERE TO LOOK:
‍Pretend you're a customer or user, open a fresh browser tab, type in your own URL and see what you find. Enough said.