Unlock Customer Experience for B2B Growth or Ignore it at your Peril

Whether you have a customer experience (CX) strategy in place or not, if people are buying from your business (B2B or B2C), they are having an experience with your business; simply one you are or are not managing. Failing to have a CX strategy in place, led from the top, can lead to challenges with customer retention, high acquisition costs and potentially increasing operational costs due to poor customer satisfaction.

?Customer experience means how a customer/client feels as a result of every interaction and touchpoint they have with your company, products, or services. Having a clear strategy in place, covering critical areas including product/service, technology & processes, people, and data, you are failing to manage a critical area of your business. The impact of which can be lost customers and a fractured business, with each department focused on their own areas and a lack of cross functional collaboration.?

88% of buyers say experience matters as much as a company’s products or services (Salesforce).?

It is true that in the B2B world, customer experience is often neglected or falls behind other business needs. Despite customer service / account teams typically having responsibility for managing the customer relationships, only a small part of the journey that customer has with your organisation is being managed. This can mean that other areas of the customers experience fall far behind expectations leading to stagnation of revenue despite efforts from sales teams. Ultimately, this can lead to customer churn or simply a passive client who will wait until the contract renewal date to put the contract out for tender. This results in additional resource and additional cost involved in managing the entire ‘response to tender’ process, which could be avoided.

?Is complexity in B2B causing businesses to de-prioritise customer experience?

?It is true that the customer journey tends to be more complex in B2B than B2C companies. Potentially this is one reason only a small number of B2B organisations have a customer experience strategy in place.?

According to B2B International, [1]just 14% of B2Bs say customer experience is ingrained in their organisation’.?

Businesses should focus on making the process as simple as possible for their customers. This can be tricky as typically there are many partners involved in a B2B customer journey, which can result in a disconnected experience for your clients, adding complexity. A high focus on sales and driving new partnership opportunities, creating indirect channel partner networks, can result in customers being (according to research) [2]fifty-seven% through the buying process before they engage with a company representative. For many businesses, these indirect sales channels are essential to the business however the impact is a lack of control over the customer experience. This, however, can be overcome by implementing working practices and having your partners built into your customer experience strategy.

?Whilst the sales process can certainly hamper a company’s ability to control their customers experience, failing to have a customer experience strategy in place means a lack of understanding of the impact every person within the organisation has on that experience. It results in a lack of awareness of the customers journey and importantly, an inability to manage that experience positively. When a customer has a consistently good experience, they will buy more.

?In fact, according to PWC, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for an excellent customer experience.

Having an holistic approach to customer experience is essential.

?Frontline teams are typically viewed as the holder of the relationship, the team that has the most impact. This is shortsighted. Businesses must work with a variety of customer teams, depending on their product or service. This may include networking, operations, IT, finance, store staff, distribution partners/teams to name a few. It is essential that a customer experience strategy covers all areas and sets expectations for all teams that interact with their client’s business.

?It is often forgotten or ignored that systems and processes that work for your business, may not work for your customers. It is key that businesses seek feedback on all aspects of their customers experience to understand friction points and areas to improve. It is often the case that businesses are simply not aware of areas across their customers journey that are causing frustration or having a negative impact on client teams. These issues can fester and cause significant damage to your customers commitment to your business. B2B organisations have an opportunity to curate their customers experience, providing them with a consistently good experience driving longevity and increased revenue.

??In the words of Jeff Bezos ‘“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It is our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

?With the success of Amazon, he must be right, yes?

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Gaining senior sponsorship is critical for the success of a customer experience strategy.?

It has been proven that having a robust and successful customer experience strategy, which is covering all aspects of the customers journey with your business across all touchpoints, will drive sustainable growth and customer satisfaction. However, whether done well or done poorly, depends on how engaged the senior leadership team are. It is essential to have complete support and backing of the most senior person in the organisation. With the focus on financials, the balance sheet and ensuring EBITDA is achieved, understanding the impact a CX strategy can have on these areas is essential. Put simply, having a customer experience strategy in place that is executed consistently well will:

?·?????? Reduce customer churn/passivity through improved customer satisfaction

·?????? Increase retention and sales success with increased openness to cross selling

·?????? Reduce risk of churn with an increasing footprint of services

·?????? Improve employee satisfaction resulting in reduced attrition

·?????? Reduce operating costs with less firefighting, resources focused on re-pitching services

For all these areas, costs and values can be calculated specific to your business, providing your senior team with the information they need to realise how critical prioritising customer experience is for their business and support development of a CX strategy. By prioritising customer experience and securing support from senior leadership, businesses can unlock the full potential of CX to drive growth, foster loyalty, and secure a competitive edge in today's dynamic marketplace. This opportunity should not be ignored.

Clare White is CEO and founder of Connected CX, a Customer Experience consultancy helping businesses solve problems with customer centric solutions.

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[1] B2B International, ‘Six steps to B2B Customer Experience Excellence

[2] Accenture ‘Why B2B companies have lost control of the customer experience