Do B2B Customers Really Prefer Calling to Ordering?

Nearly every manufacturer and wholesaler says it at some point: our customers aren't asking for a webshop, and they prefer human contact. It usually comes as one argument, while it's two separate claims. There's no demand for it, and the personal contact is why customers stay.

The first claim is testable. The second is often true, just not in the way it's meant.

The research that exists points one way. In August and September 2025, Gartner surveyed 646 B2B buyers: 67 percent say they prefer a buying process without a sales rep. A year earlier that figure was 61 percent. Sana Commerce, a competitor of ours, surveyed 750 buyers across six countries for its B2B Buyer Report 2025: 73 percent prefer to buy online and 75 percent would consider switching supplier for a better experience. That second study comes from a party that sells B2B webshops itself, which is worth carrying with you while reading. The Gartner figures come from an independent analyst firm and point the same way.

Neither proves your customers think that way. It does say something about where the average buyer is heading.

1. “They're not asking for it” rarely means “they don't want it”

Customers ask their supplier for a price, a lead time and a solution when something goes wrong. Nobody asks for a customer portal, just as twenty years ago nobody asked for an email address instead of a fax. The demand shows up in behavior.

Where you can read it: the number of order emails arriving after hours or at the weekend, the number of times a month someone asks you to resend an invoice or packing slip, and the number of calls that boil down to “has my order shipped yet”.

There's a demographic shift at play too. In that same Sana survey, 71 percent of B2B buyers are now millennials and Gen Z. That's the generation handling its private purchases entirely online and bringing the habit to work.

Who you actually hear from is shifting as well. Your account manager speaks with the owner or the purchasing manager. The order gets placed by the warehouse worker, the site foreman or the technician. That second group rarely gets asked anything, and it's precisely the group dealing with the ordering process daily.

2. Contact and friction aren't the same thing

Someone calling to reorder eight familiar items isn't maintaining a relationship. That's an administrative act with a voice attached, because there's no other way.

That kind of contact doesn't run error-free either. According to APQC benchmarks, manual order entry carries an error rate of 1 to 3 percent, and 33 percent of buyers in the Sana research report order errors caused by inaccurate data. A wrongly transcribed item number costs more goodwill than an order the customer placed themselves.

So the question isn't how much contact there is, but which contact customers choose and which they endure. Advice on an application, a second opinion on a specification, a solution when there's a problem: that's what customers come back for. Reading out item numbers isn't part of it.

3. A webshop changes what the contact is about

In most sales support teams, a large part of the day goes to taking orders and retyping them into the ERP. Industry estimates put that at 20 to 40 percent of such a team's time, at roughly twelve minutes of processing per manual order. Run that against your order volume from last month.

That work disappears as soon as orders come in directly. The people don't disappear with it.

What takes its place determines whether the investment pays off: following up quotes left open, calling customers whose ordering has dropped off, helping introduce new accounts. Work that goes undone at most companies because the phone takes priority.

4. Sales gains information

A rep who visits without preparation asks how things are going. Someone who sees beforehand that this customer's order frequency has been falling for two months, that a quote has been open since April, and that there were three searches for a product group never supplied to them before, has a different conversation.

That part is usually missing from the objection. Digital orders produce data on customer behavior that you never collect systematically when orders come in by phone.

5. Personal contact doesn't scale, and the relationship often sits in one person's head

When the relationship rests entirely on one account manager, all the knowledge sits there too: which price agreement was made, why that customer wants a particular version, what went wrong last year. With holidays, illness or departure, that knowledge disappears, and sometimes the customer follows.

A portal with order history, quotes, price agreements and documents records the relationship at company level. The personal contact stays. The company is simply no longer dependent on what sits in one calendar and one memory.

6. Not every customer deserves the same kind of contact

Nearly every B2B company has a long tail of small customers absorbing a disproportionate number of service minutes, while the largest accounts get too little attention because the sales support team has to process the daily order flow. Self-service for the routine makes it possible to put people where they make a difference.

That the split matters shows in how heavily buyers weigh the experience: in the Sana research, 87 percent say a poor experience affects their relationship with the supplier, and 85 percent have run into problems that led to an abandoned purchase.

Dupont Cheese, part of Milcobel, uses its customer portal with that goal. The sales flow runs more smoothly and the relationship with retailers grows stronger for it.

7. Availability is a form of service people can't provide

A site foreman who needs materials at six in the morning, a technician ordering a spare part on Saturday, a buyer clearing the orders in the evening: those moments fall outside any sales support team's staffing. Without an alternative, the order gets postponed, or placed with a supplier who is reachable.

8. The customer who isn't asking you might be asking your competitor

Larger buyers increasingly work from their own procurement system and expect suppliers to fit into it, through punchout or a connected catalog. That kind of requirement surfaces in a tender or a supplier evaluation, long before anyone raises it in conversation.

Nestor Company, active in electrical and HVAC wholesale, moved from Sana Commerce to a platform with a direct connection to SAP Business One. The trigger was how their customers order, not an explicitly stated customer request.

9. An empty webshop usually points to a failed rollout

This is the trap that appears to confirm the objection afterward. A platform goes live, one email goes out about it, after three months barely anything runs through it, and the conclusion is that customers don't want it.

Keep in mind that buyers only approach their supplier late in the process. Research by 6sense among 934 buyers put that moment at roughly 70 percent of the buying journey. Waiting until a customer asks for a portal means waiting for a signal that rarely comes.

What works: start with the customers who order most often, have the rep create the account during a visit, walk through the first order together, and keep the phone line open. Making the channel mandatory rarely works. Placing it alongside the existing route and actively introducing it does.

Where a person remains the right channel

For a first purchase of a complex product, for negotiating annual volumes, for a complaint or an escalation: there a person is the channel. A portal helps at most by making the history available quickly.

With customers who deliberately choose the personal approach, there's little point closing that route either. The contact simply stays. It's just no longer the only way to place an order.

Test it against your own numbers

The debate about customer contact rarely gets settled with arguments. It does get settled with figures you already have on hand:

• How many order emails arrive outside office hours, and what happens to them until the next morning?
• What are the incoming calls about: products and advice, or delivery status, invoices and repeat orders?
• How much time per day does the sales support team spend retyping orders into the ERP?
• Who places the order at your customers, and has anyone ever asked that person anything?
• What would the sales support team do with the time freed up, and has that been agreed in advance?
• Which of your largest customers works from its own procurement system, and what do they expect from suppliers in it?

In practice the fourth question yields the most, and it's also the cheapest to ask. Call three customers and ask who actually places the orders there and how that person would prefer to do it. What comes out of that weighs more than any research in this article, and more than anything we have to say about it.

Frequently asked questions

Do we lose customer contact if we launch a B2B webshop?

The contact changes in substance. Orders, delivery status questions and invoice requests run through the platform, which frees up the sales support team's time for advice, quote follow-up and account management. Phone and email continue to exist alongside it.

Our customers aren't asking for a webshop. Why build one?

Customers rarely ask for something they don't know is available. The demand shows up in behavior: order emails outside office hours, repeated requests for invoices and delivery dates, and orders placed by warehouse staff and technicians who never speak to the account manager. In a Gartner survey of 646 B2B buyers from 2025, 67 percent prefer a buying process without a sales rep.

What does our sales support team do when orders arrive on their own?

The time freed up goes to work that goes undone today: following up open quotes, contacting customers with falling order frequency, onboarding new accounts and advising on technical questions. It's worth agreeing on that in advance.

Does a webshop undermine the role of our sales reps?

The rep gains information. Order history, search behavior and open quotes are visible before the visit. That makes the conversation more concrete. The routine orders that used to run through the rep now run independently.

How do we make sure customers actually use the platform?

By rolling it out actively rather than just announcing it. Start with the customers who order most often, have the rep create the account during a visit, walk through the first order together, and keep existing channels open.

In which situations does personal contact remain the best channel?

For a first purchase of a complex product, for negotiations on prices and volumes, for technical advice and for complaints or escalations. A portal supports those conversations by making the history immediately available.

Figures and sources

The figures below come from international research, not Belgian sector data. They indicate a direction, not a benchmark. Your own numbers from your ERP and phone system carry more weight in a sales conversation.

• Preference for a buying process without a sales rep (67 percent in 2026, 61 percent in 2025): Gartner Sales Survey (646 B2B buyers, August and September 2025).
• Preference for buying online, willingness to switch, buyer age distribution, order errors and the effect of experience on the relationship: Sana Commerce, B2B Buyer Report 2025 (750 buyers across six countries, September 2024, fieldwork by SAPIO Research). Research by a competitor: Sana Commerce sells B2B e-commerce software itself and has an interest in buyers wanting to order online.
• Time spent on and error rate of manual order processing: APQC benchmarks and industry estimates, cited in Conexiom. Research by a vendor: Conexiom sells order automation.
• Point of first contact in the buying journey: 6sense (934 buyers, 2023).