Everyone wants an improved customer experience in B2B, but no one clearly knows how to get started. According to a survey by Accenture 90% (!) of B2B leaders believe it's crucial to invest in customer experience to reach company goals. However, only 72% of these leaders believe they influence how CX is treated across their organisation. Looks like B2B CX is either the new elephant in the room or the hot potato that everyone throws around. If B2B CX is so important better start cutting the elephant.
There are three reasons why CX in B2B is a difficult problem to solve.
- Unclear ownership of CX - when you ask B2B leaders to define what good CX is they typically reply mentioning a very broad range of elements. It's not unusual for them to start pointing fingers at other departments not under their control (sales points fingers at marketing, service points fingers at sales, etc.). B2B leaders should acknowledge that the customer experience can only be seen as the sum of all experiences the buyer and ultimately the customer have with your company. It is an end-to-end, cross-departmental problem and all B2B leaders have a stake in it. The customer experience isn't a problem you can solve on your own little departmental island. Solving the problem doesn't entirely falls under your circle of control/influence.
- Missing business case - Companies rarely invest for emotional reasons, they invest in something because they expect a return on investment, that is, ideally speaking, quantified in a business case. Even though the B2B world is becoming better in measuring customer experience (CSAT, NPS, CES,..) it's very difficult to tie improvements of customer experience to increases in revenue. This is especially the case because you can expect a time-lag between investments in CX and revenue. So if you have a great champion in your organisation that build out that cross-departmental CX program, he/she will probably hit the wall due to a missing business case or a business case full of unfounded assumptions.
- Struggle to marry people and technology - Imagine that you're there: you have a clear owner, the business case gate is passed with an official "GO" for the CX program, only then the heavy lifting starts. Every CX program combines technology (that is ideally well adopted) and a form of expected behavioural change from your customer facing teams. Theoretically designing key customer interactions (both online and offline) is step one, there are plenty of resources out there to help you with that step. But the real challenge is empowering these interactions with the right tools and behaviours. Change management is typically the crucial and forgotten element.
That being said.. It's difficult to become a customer centric B2B organisation, but how can you get started:
Build a cross-departmental CX team and give them the mandate and task to build an end-to-end CX program. Let the team report as high as possible in the organisation to avoid finger pointing to other departments.
Don't let a business case be a showstopper. Instead invest in creating an internal benchmark to measure CX and design a cadence on which you will evaluate these metrics. Our analyst friends Gartner, Forrester and Walker all state that CX in B2B will become more and more important, if not the only sustainable strategy for growth. Approach investments in CX in a similar way to investments in R&D, the outcome isn't clearly measurable, but you still do it because it can be a competitive differentiator over time.
Invest early on in change management to support your CX transformation. This encompasses: early communication to the field on the CX program, clear expectation setting on behavioural change, empowering first line management to drive the CX vision, over-communicate and over-train, build out a change ambassador network and beyond. It requires ressources with atypically combined skills to do so: they should be expert in change management and business/IT alignment.
Are you struggling with B2B CX transformation, know you're not alone as 72% of B2B leaders don't know how to influence CX. Make sure that you're guided by the right people to set yourself up for your successful CX transformation.
Contact Ineke in case you want to solve your CX paradox