Managing Customer Experience in B2B
Introduction
I was asked about the difference between managing customer experience at companies that serve individuals (B2C) versus those whose customers are other businesses (B2B). I didn’t have a complete answer at the time, until I had the opportunity to work in CX at a B2B organization. I’ll address that question in this article.
What are the differences between Customer Experience Management in (B2C) Vs. (B2B) companies?
The Fundamental Difference: The Purchase Decision
The fundamental difference is that in B2C the customer is the user/beneficiary of the service or product and is also the primary or secondary decision-maker (influencing the decision of a relative, friend, or colleague). In the end, we deal with that individual as a standalone entity.
In B2B, there are three main stakeholder types: decision-makers, influencers on the decision-maker, and end users of the product/service. When you think about the customer in a B2B relationship, you can’t think of a single person — and if you do, the relationship will end when that person leaves the organization, leaving you with no knowledge of or access to the other stakeholders. As a result, the relationship is less likely to continue. For example: a company selling IT systems to other businesses will find the decision-makers and influencers in the executive team, IT, procurement, and finance, while the user sits within the department the system will serve. That’s why records of all communications and interactions with every stakeholder must be kept in a CRM system, so you can reach others if one person moves to another department or resigns.
The Second Difference: The Nature of the Relationship
In B2C, the relationship usually revolves around the brand as a whole and the experience an individual customer has with the company. In B2B, there are many people within a single customer (or “account,” as it’s commonly called). These many people prefer to work with a single point of contact at the provider — usually called the account manager or relationship manager — who becomes a pivotal figure in the relationship between the two companies. This person must reflect the human side of the relationship with the account they manage and must have deep knowledge of the customer’s industry and business to serve them well. That’s why losing a beloved account manager directly affects the relationship with those customers and may even end it, because much of the relationship is built on the emotional, not the rational (functional) side. You’ll often see customers move to a competitor simply to follow the account manager who recently joined that competitor.
The account manager model can be expensive in both B2C and B2B. That’s why many companies assign relationship managers only to top-tier customers (those who generate the highest revenue) — or, to put it differently, to the 20% of customers who generate 80% of the revenue. Losing one of these customers has a much bigger impact than losing one in the other 80% who only generate 20% of revenue. This doesn’t mean those customers are unimportant or that you shouldn’t deliver them a great experience — it simply means the company must manage its resources wisely and set priorities to use them as effectively as possible.
The Third Difference: The Customer Journey
Customer journey maps in B2B differ greatly from those in B2C. B2B companies must build a journey for every type of stakeholder — decision-makers, influencers, and the users of the products or services — because the journey, touchpoints, needs, and expectations of each will differ. If a company wants to ensure everyone’s satisfaction, it can’t just understand one party in the equation; it must have a clear picture of all stakeholders. For example: the needs and expectations of a procurement manager are completely different from those of a marketing manager, and each will view your offering differently. So how do you win both at once?
Since the customer journey is closely tied to customer segmentation, it’s worth noting that B2C companies segment customers based on persona. B2B companies need personas for every type of individual they deal with inside each company — not a single persona at the account level.
The Fourth Difference: Measuring the Experience
Designing a voice-of-customer program and measuring the experience is more complex in B2B. As mentioned, there’s a decision-maker, an influencer, and a user. Which one should you survey? Whose needs should you understand and whose expectations should you manage? The simple yet difficult answer is: all of them.
The challenge lies in knowing why and when to engage each group so that the frequency of contact doesn’t become annoying or unjustified. The people doing the outreach should also be at a matching level of seniority. For example, you might survey a user (a junior employee in some department) through an ordinary field researcher. You can’t use the same researcher to survey the CEO — there would be a huge gap between the two. The same applies to the cadence of contact: senior decision-makers don’t have the time a user has. So you might delegate gathering the voice of the customer to the relationship manager or account manager, who meets with decision-makers once per quarter (a quarterly business review) to ask open-ended questions far from standardized metrics — which might otherwise signal to the respondent that everything you care about is just a number. If you’re not confident in the strength of the relationship between the account manager and the decision-makers at the target company, consider appointing an independent (experienced and seasoned) researcher to conduct the quarterly review. If the interview is with the CEO, the CEO could meet them personally accompanied by someone from the CX team.
When you think about measurement, the first questions that come to mind are: who is the target group and what are their contact details? B2B companies, unlike B2C, will need a very strong CRM system that everyone in the organization adopts, feeds, and updates every time there’s an interaction with a stakeholder in the same account. Without this, you won’t know your customers — and therefore won’t be able to measure their experience.
In general, the absence of a universally used CRM means that knowledge about customers (companies) lives scattered in the minds of employees across different departments. Each holds a piece of the picture the others don’t. Either everyone assembles the picture by feeding the system, or the customer (account) view stays fragmented in a way that can’t be put back together.
Finally, it’s worth noting that most CX technology solutions are built around measuring individuals’ opinions, not around measuring multiple individuals within a single company and then analyzing their feedback with different weights to arrive at a single index reflecting the level of the relationship or the experience at the account level. CX specialists will face a significant challenge in achieving this.
In Closing
I hope this article has answered the question and offered practitioners some practical advice. To all my fellow professionals — whether you work in B2C or B2B — I wish you the best.
Related concepts: Customer Journey Mapping, Voice of Customer (VoC), NPS, CSAT, CES.
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