With all of the talk these days about the “customer experience,” and the voice of the customer (VOC), there is little doubt who holds the upper-hand in the sales equation. According to a survey of more than 1,450 executives at B2B companies worldwide by business consultancy Accenture, 85 percent of executives say the customer experience is important to their companies’ strategic priorities; 88 percent indicate they are investing more in this area year over year.
“This increased importance is driven by fundamental changes in what business customers expect and how they want to interact with their suppliers,” the Accenture report states.
Not to mention the dire consequences of bad customer experiences. Research by marketing analyst firm Demand Metric and sponsored by Showpad, provider of a mobile sales enablement platform, shows that 72 percent of the outcomes from a bad sales experience result in lost revenue and 70 percent of the time it takes months if not years to restore the relationship.
“The outcome of a bad sales meeting is far more grim than just a speed bump in the sales cycle — revenue is lost,” the Demand Metric reports states. “Well over half of the outcomes (59 percent) of a bad sales meeting result in immediate opportunity loss. Best case, this represents a short-term revenue impact with the immediate deal going by the wayside.
“Most notably, 13 percent of the time there is long-term revenue loss, which occurs when not only the immediate deal evaporates, but also future deals, either permanently or until the deal’s sponsor moves on.”
What do customer experience efforts look like?
“The advent of social media and real-time interactive feedback via the Internet allows every customer to build and expect a relationship with your business, rather than just touch points. Yet we are all still learning what that means in terms of hard business practices,” entrepreneur Martin Zwilling stated in a recent guest post for Forbes.com.
Executives acknowledge the customer experience is here to stay. Three out of four respondents to the Accenture survey believe that the increased importance of the customer experience will result in major and sustained changes across sales and service in the next two years.
That said, while it has become more common to assert the value of customer experience programs in business-to-consumer industries, return on customer experience investment remains elusive in B2B.
“There are material differences between what we have identified as masters of customer experience that are ‘playing to win’ from those companies that ‘play not to lose,’ with masters yielding up to twice the return on their customer experience investments,” the report states. Accenture identified five factors that help explain masters’ strong results:
• Masters walk the talk. All companies perceive the customer experience as critical to business, but masters back up their talk with money. They are more likely to increase their investment in talent, tools and processes that are necessary to deliver an effective customer experience.
• Masters build customer experience capabilities based on a clear idea of what customers notice and value. Sixty-five percent of masters, versus 24 percent of strivers and 10 percent of laggards, said their customer metrics are effective in providing actionable insight they can use to improve the customer experience.
• Masters “fast forward” with digital without forgetting analog. Strivers and laggards tend to use digital channels to build awareness and attract prospects but then funnel these prospects to analog channels for sales and service. Masters have struck a balance between the use of digital and analog channels and recognize that a growing number of new, high-value, digitally savvy customers will expect to “stay digital” throughout the sales and service processes.
• Masters focus on real business outcomes and minimize or eliminate complexity. Strivers and laggards lack clarity on what customer experience programs they need to turn off and what should continue running. Masters are adept at monitoring the effective-ness of multiple customer experience programs to understand what’s working and what’s not.
• Masters ensure customer experience leaders are close to the profit and loss. Masters are much more likely than strivers and laggards to say responsibility for the customer experience is centralized within a C-level function that directly manages several functional areas.
To “play to win,” B2B companies need to face the challenges and opportunities from the changing dynamics of the business customers, the Accenture report states. Traditional B2B models are built around a linear path or funnel to purchase. Today, however, accelerated by digital technology, the way business customers engage with suppliers has fundamentally changed. The customer journey is now more dynamic, more informed and more continuous.
A superior customer experience can pay significant dividends in the form of higher revenue. That should be music to the ears of executives at B2B companies who are tired of playing not to lose and, more than ever, must play to win.
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