When it comes to customer experience, the B2C – Business to Consumer business model, which mostly addresses the end consumer, comes to mind. However, although B2C and B2B – Business to Business business models use common metrics in customer experience management, they should be managed differently from each other.
While there is an end consumer in the B2C customer experience, there may be different people under the roof of a single company from the first contact stage to the sales and installation stages in the B2B customer experience. Measuring and managing different services offered to different people at different touchpoints as a whole customer experience can seem complex and challenging.
A much better customer experience is targeted at every step of the customer experience journey. In the B2B business model, there are many players such as manufacturers and dealers. Adapting a customer-centric mindset to B2B business is just as important as serving retail customers, but it comes with its own set of challenges.
In the diagram below you can see the possible groups involved in the customer experience in the B2B business model.
Identify the people and departments involved
Creating a customer journey map in B2B customer experience can be complicated. The most critical point is to identify all relevant people and units in the process. We can talk about 5 possible groups: requesters, request approvers, decision makers, impactors and end users. The number of these groups may be less depending on the type of product/service. We should treat these groups as touch points and measure them with this approach.
Even if you follow the corporate customer as a single account, define the relevant people under this account. The timeliness of this information is another critical issue. In B2B customer information, be careful not to create contact records with general e-mail addresses such as info@ etc. Even if your customer is a legal entity, your contact should always be a real person.
Ask the right questions
Make sure you get feedback from all parties about themselves. Don’t force them to deal with questions they see as irrelevant to their interests. For example, what matters to a purchase manager is often quite different from an IT manager or end user.
Use common metrics (NPS, CSAT, CES, happiness) for each department, but always differentiate the questions. Include metrics, closed-ended questions and open-ended questions in your questionnaire. Send personalised surveys via email and SMS channels.
Divide into phases
If you offer a project-based service or a service with different processes, the right approach would be to send your questions to different units as the relevant phases are completed and measure the total experience. Measuring the experience of all units at once after a long project is completed may not give accurate results.
Be proactive
Survey forms used in B2C customer experience may be insufficient to collect feedback in B2B. Reaching the number of customers that will form a sample as in B2C will generally not be possible in B2B business models.
Being proactive may be the right method here. Visit your customers at every stage, call them, ask them questions about your products and services, and ask for feedback. Record all this data as company / unit / person. Add your personal notes to customer feedback. If there is a situation that requires you to take action, inform the relevant units and follow the process.
