#68: How to Build Effective CX Programs

Hello and welcome to the B2B Insights podcast. I'm Jennifer Strange, research director at B2B International, and I'm joined by my colleague Color Wilcock, managing director of B2B International, to discuss the topic of customer experience in B2B. Customer experience covers all interactions that a customer has with your brand, your people, your products, your services, your marketing, communication, so absolutely everything. And today we'll be discussing four key points. So firstly, the state of customer experience in B2B markets, laying the foundations for our customer experience program, and then going on to discuss developing the program and enhancing it over time. So Connor, to kick us off, what are the key trends or changes that you're seeing in B2B CX at the moment? Thanks, Jen. Great to be with you. And this is a subject that I'm really passionate about and I'm sure we're going to cover a lot of ground today. I guess the starting point though is perhaps to talk a little bit about some of the pitfalls or some of the things that B2B organizations are doing wrong with CX at the moment. And, and I say that knowing that actually customer experience in the B2B world has come a long way in the last 10, 15, 20 years. But I've seen a bit of a stagnation really, not just in terms of CX measurement, which we'll come on to, but in terms of just companies approaches to customer experience in the B2B world. And we're seeing this play out in how customers are responding. So one thing, for example, that we have seen is, is stabilization of key performance metrics like the. Net promoter score and customer satisfaction. They've been static now for a good few years. For example, we see in our annual Superpowers survey that there's been no real improvements to those advocacy and satisfaction measures that so many B2B companies use. And yet our view is that B2B organizations aren't offering less to customers than they were before. So the upshot of that is that we believe that this stabilization, as in no improvement in key metrics, is due to rising customer expectations not being met or not being matched by improvements in customer experience by those companies that serve them. So what you see is this increasing gap between expectation and reality, and that's causing a slowdown or even in some cases, a clawing back of some of those satisfaction and loyalty measures. That's one of the key things that we're seeing. And I wonder whether it's partly to do with the fact that B2B organizations have just been quite slow to respond to innovations that their customers are seeing, but in the other part of their lives, the consumer parts of their lives, and they're carrying over those expectations into their professional lives in the B2B world. Yeah, definitely. I think it's really interesting the combination of how people can carry over the expectations from consumer and Customer lives into B2B and its impacting what we're seeing in B2B CX. I was just wondering as well, are there any other factors that you'd consider when thinking about B2B customer experience? Well, there's a few things, and I'm not suggesting I'm going to say anything groundbreaking to the B2B marketers and insight professionals listening to this. But one thing that you have to take into account with B2B customer experience is its complexity versus the consumer world due to a brand having to serve multiple stakeholders and serve them across a much more protracted and complicated purchasing and customer journey. Think of all the different touch points that you might have as a business decision maker versus the relative simplicity of a consumer customer experience and buying journey. So that's one thing. And I think for that reason, the importance of having a more tailored approach to cx within B2B environments can't be overstated. It's really critical that organizations serving businesses don't do so in a cookie cutter. One size fits all way. And do you think in that case that B2B companies are currently sort of evolving how they measure customer experience to keep pace with those changes that they're seeing in customer experience? I mean, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? And unfortunately, based on what we're seeing at the moment, my answer to your question is no, not really. I think there are a number of things that B2B companies are doing wrong or suboptimally when it comes to measuring the customer experience. One example of that is this over reliance on single measures like the Net promoter score, which we've already mentioned. And that's not to suggest, by the way, that we don't think that's a valuable measure in the B2B world. We do. I think it has its place and it has its pitfalls. But we're seeing lots of businesses that are hanging all of their hats, all of their B2B CX hats on that one measure. You see it all the time, these surveys that come through from suppliers. And the only thing that they're measuring in the survey is a customer score from 0 to 10. And maybe if you're lucky, why did you say that question? So this over reliance that creates this blinkered view of the experience using only single metric surveys, I think part of that or linked to that I should say, is this neglect of a more strategic evaluation of the customer relationship in favor of straightforward transactional, really transactional number gathering. So send a one question survey every time the customer places an order. Send a one question survey every time they have an interaction with a service rep. And again, I'm not, not supposing that that shouldn't be done. It's just being done instead of a broader relationship evaluation through a sort of bigger, a bigger set of surveys. A couple of other quick points before we move on is I think there's been a lack of internal buy in and accountability. So lots of B2B organizations and whether this is intentional, whether this is just because it's difficult to gather resource and budget to do it really properly, they're not, they're just focusing on the measurement, just get the data from the customer. They're not thinking about how to turn that into insight. And crucially they're not thinking about how to bring everybody within their business along with them. And that's the only way in which you're going to improve the customer experience is having buy in from all different functions that touch the customer directly or indirectly within that, within that organization. Without that, you've gathered a number, you've got data, it doesn't really mean anything and you can't really do anything with it. So we argue what's the value if that's the way you're approaching it? And I think for that reason we thought the time is right for us to put our money where our mouths are and come up with a B2B customer experience playbook that we can share with customers and other B2B organizations as a bit of a blueprint for how we think companies like this should approach CX in the B2B space. So I guess now is probably a chance for us to move on to what, what companies should do about all of this. We don't want to paint too bleak a picture here. And I think over the rest of our discussion we'll, we'll go step by step through what we think organizations should be doing. And I think there's a temptation to try and do it all now. Right. And we know that success comes from walking before you can run. And we know that the hardest thing is to get everything started. So I guess my question to you, Jen, would be, what are the things that brands can do to Lay those proper foundations for valuable, actionable customer experience research. Yes, I think it's really important, before you begin, to take a step back and think about a few different factors that you're going to consider. So firstly, really thinking about what are the key aims and objectives of the programme. So what are you looking to get out of this programme at the end of it? Secondly, I think it's really important as well to look at where the information gaps are within your organisation. So where are your blind spots? What do you not know about your customers currently? Thirdly, I think it's also really important to think about the scope of the programme. So your programme could cover either a small scope, a wide scope. Really important, I think, to think about who are going to be the customers that you want to include and also the countries as well, because a lot of our clients and a lot of the customer experience programs we work on are global in nature. So definitely worth thinking about who is included within the program. And then as well, I think it's also good to look internally and think about who are the stakeholders within your organisation that you really need to engage and involve in the programme. Because for it to be successful, you know, everybody needs to be on board with the programme from the beginning. And that's the key point, isn't it? Jen, we've mentioned this a couple of times already that with the best will in the world, it doesn't matter how structurally organized you are with building a CX research program, if key people within the business aren't bought in, it's just not going to go anywhere, it's not going to happen. So what are some of the practical ways in which brands can engage stakeholders early and in the right ways? Yes, I think the first thing to think about is thinking about who within the organisation needs to be involved within the program. So this could include country managers, business unit managers, whoever really is close to the customer and should be involved right from the start. I think actually getting them involved from the beginning, it's a really good way to clarify the aims and objectives of the customer Experience program. A really good chance as well to go over any challenges that they foresee, any concerns that they might have, which would stop them being bought into the program later on. I think as well, it's also really important at the start to get everybody involved, because at the end of the customer Experience program you are obviously you want to drive change within your organization. So getting everybody involved at the start can mean that you can have more meaningful and active actions at the end and drive that meaningful change within the organization. And I think as well it's important to get those customer country managers, those business unit managers involved in the start because they're going to be the ones who are going to be providing the all important customer lists, the ones who are going to be informing the customer about the research that's happening. So definitely really key to getting everybody involved and bought in at the start of the program. I completely agree. So you've got everyone bought in, you've got the required investment, everyone's aligned on objectives. How do you businesses know what they're actually going to measure? That they're going to be measuring the right things here? Yeah, I think one of the key things to do which is really important to include at the start of a customer experience program is to think about customer journey mapping. So this is where we map the customer journey right from the start when your customer is becoming aware of your brand all the way through to when they hopefully become a repeat customer at the end. This customer journey mapping maps all the different touch points that a customer might have with your business. And once you've mapped these touch points, it's again really important to think about where we think we're doing well currently, where we think there might be pain points and also really critically those moments of truth for the customer. So which interactions are the most important for the customer experience? I think there are some real key benefits of doing this before you start a full program. So it can be really good to compare your internal views of where you're strong, where you're weaker with the perceptions of the customers at the end of the research. It gives that really nice comparison between what we think and then what the customer thinks, it can also really help identify those areas that we want to focus on too. So seeing which of those important touch points they can be really good to maybe focus on a little bit more within the research. And it's also just going to provide a consistent view across the organization of the customer journey, how we interact with customers, and definitely set us up well for designing a questionnaire for the research program. I think those are some really good points, Jen. And I mean, we should say at this point perhaps that we know customer journey mapping in the B2B space is not a completely new concept. But at the same time, you'd be amazed at how many businesses try and dive into CX measurement without actually knowing what the detail of the customer journey looks like. And there's a couple of ways you can do that. You can make it an entirely internal exercise But I think our recommendation, if at all possible, is to involve the customer in that journey mapping exercise so that you're not just moving ahead with measuring what are ultimately internal hypotheses about the different touch points that the customer experiences. Get the customer's view to start with. I think it's a critical part of laying the groundwork for success. And there is a tendency I found to think of CX measurement as a largely quantitative exercise. No, many, many brands, as I've said already, are reducing CX to a single metric or to surface level data gathering. But another benefit of journey mapping is it just forces people to think more deeply about the customer experience rather than thinking purely in terms of headline numbers and ratings. You're stepping into the customer's shoes. You're thinking in detail about the customer's ups and downs and the various stages along that journey. Should that then translate into the type of insight we're gathering from our customers in the broader program as well? Yeah, I think it's a really good point and I like the point where you said that we should think about not just measuring the customer journey and the customer experience, but also really trying to understand it as well. Because I think sometimes it can be hard to action insights that maybe are just a single measurement number. You need some of that rich data behind it. So I think another good thing to include maybe as a starting point for a customer experience program is to think about involving some qualitative research at the beginning. This is a really good starting point. It can really help understand explore different themes and topics of customers before you then start to measure again. It can be really good for building the foundations of a questionnaire. So once you understand from your qualitative research what needs to be measured later on, you can then build a better customer experience survey to start measuring some of those topics. I think as well, qualitative research, you can also do a lot more with it other than just measure what's happening with the customer experience. So I really like creating Personas for customers. I think that can really help bring the research to life. And you need qualitative data to be able to do that. I think as well. It really helps dig into what matters for customers and your Personas that you have created. So it's always a really interesting and exciting activity looking at the needs, the expectations, the pain points of your Personas that you've created. It can really help bring the research to life later on. I completely agree. And just a quick point on that. I think that and it's important when designing, or even just thinking more philosophically about customer experience measurement, that the aim here is not just to figure out what you're doing well and what you're doing poorly. The aim is to understand what's important to the customer. Because if you align that with what you're doing well or what you're doing poorly, then you can make improvements and prioritize and make the right investments in the right areas to really make a proper difference to how the customer perceives you and how they. How they go through that journey in a more seamless. Seamless way. Yeah, definitely. I think it's a really good point, thinking about it kind of in the wider context of what do our customers actually want from us, not just what are we doing well on what we're giving our customers. Yeah. So I suppose there we've laid the groundwork for our customer experience program. So if we're going to move on and develop that programme further, what do you think is the most important thing to think about when developing a program? Well, I think, I guess that the views I have on this are really practical. So we can, and we should think aspirationally about everything that we want to achieve, these big ideas, these big improvements that we want to make. But you have to have the right type of program in place and that means that various people across your business are going to have to provide you with certain information. You're going to have to think about the structure, the frequency of the survey. How long are we expecting to survey customers? For? What do we want to ask them? How many of our customers might we expect to respond to a survey that we, that we send out? And I think here it's again just important to make the distinction between relationship evaluation, relationship based CX and transactional based cx. And we think the optimal CX program has both of them. Right. So you need to be doing both transactional measurement and crucially, relationship measurement. We're going to keep our focus today on the relationship side of things. A couple of the things that you need to. That you need to be taking into account are, as I said before, frequency. We don't. We probably don't want to be doing this every week, we probably don't want to be doing it every quarter. Remember, this is a relationship survey. We tend to find that the sweet spot is annually. Some of our clients do it every six months, some of our clients wait and do it every two or three years. We think annual is usually the sweet spot because it fits nicely around all of the more day to day. Transactional measurement that you might be, that you might be doing the length of the survey. Again, you want to, you want to be capturing enough, enough insight from customers. So avoid the temptation to go for a quick one minute or two minute survey. But also you probably don't want to be surveying your customers for two hours because they're going to lose interest and they're not going to give you the insight that you need. And then don't go into the program expecting that every single one of your customers is going to participate. This is not a census, right? This is a survey, a piece of research from which you, you gain a representative view of your, of your, your customers. And the response rate that you can expect to get will vary on the method. Are we sending out a survey online? Are we picking up the phone and speaking to our customers that way? Are we doing it using some other method? It will also be impacted by the extent to which account managers and salespeople, people who are very, very close to the customer, are involved in warming up and motivating the customers to participate. So those are all things that you want to be thinking about before you start that bigger picture. Thinking of all the great things that we're going to do once we get the insights itself. Yeah, I think it's great to start thinking about kind of the pitfalls that there could be when measuring customer experience. Are there any other common pitfalls that you often see in customer experience programs? Well, I think perhaps not to belabor the point here, but just to say perhaps one more time, disregarding that relationship evaluation in favor of touchpoint or transactional surveys only. So it's really important not to forego that broader assessment of how well your company is doing with customers. Another thing that I don't know, organizations may not want to hear about this, but the tendency to lean your thumb on the scale in a couple of different ways, provide salespeople or customer account managers only providing contact details of customers that they know will rate them, rate them positively. Again, this is about getting a fully representative view of your customers experience. And you can't do that if you only pick. If you pick and choose your favorites. Another thing that we have seen quite a bit over the last three or four years is the tendency or the desire to incorporate customer experience metrics into executive bonus schemes. And we know that that's a really sensitive thing to think about. And it's not wrong to want to include some customer insight, some customer feedback into the calculation that determines the size of an executive's bonus. But we also Know that there are lots of other factors that impact a company's performance. And customer experience is an important part of that, but one and not all of it. So we just urge companies to avoid the temptation to base bonus schemes and structures on customer metrics alone. If you want it to be part of that, that's fine. So long as the program that you create has the right structures in place. It's big enough to make sure that there's not too much noise within the results rather than signal. And I guess just a couple of other things to quickly mention, avoiding the temptation to over survey your customers. Customers get frustrated by a lot of things and one thing that they get frustrated with more than most I think is being asked for their opinion again and again and again and again and again because it creates the wrong impression. It creates the impression that you didn't actually listen the first time around. So it's better to be choiceful about when we do this. Think carefully about how you fit your transactional parts of your program around your core relationship survey. And don't go out to to customers too often. They don't want to feel as though they're, you know, I told you this two weeks ago. I already gave this score. Why haven't you done anything about it? You did. You never came back to me. There's no suggestion that you ever listened to me. So why would I participate Again? That's when you start to see engagement from the customer side really dropping off a cliff. And then finally on metrics. And I suppose we should, perhaps we should talk about this in a bit more detail. Choosing the wrong metrics or perhaps choosing not enough metrics or maybe too many of them. You need to make sure that you're not just throwing in questions and metrics for the sake of it. Each thing that you measure has to have value for you. Otherwise there's no point in it, in it being included in the survey. You've just started that searching on metrics and I'm interested to know what do you think are the key metrics or the frameworks that should be included within a customer experience program? Well, if I maybe split these into different groups, starting with your key measures of customer experience, of your, of your brand's performance. Those include some metrics that I'm sure most B2B brands will be completely familiar with, probably already using, which are overall level of customer satisfaction and the net Promoter score. And it's important to understand how the net promoter score has evolved over time as well. So I encourage people to read about NPS 3.0, which is not a completely different metric. It's more what you do around that singular question to support how valuable it may be. A third one that is a bit less known, but becoming more so is the customer effort score. So this ideally would measure the perception of the customer in terms of their effort put in to the customer relationship and critically their perception of your brand's effort put out to the customer. What you tend to find there is that failing B2B brands have a perception among the customer base that there's not a lot of effort going into the relationship from, from the customer, from the supplier's side, I should say. And so what you want is at least equilibrium between the amount of effort that's put in versus put out. So those are your core, your core metrics. Now, in addition to that, I think thinking about, well, satisfaction along the customer journey. So more granular measure of satisfaction. But perhaps to bring B2B CX really into this, this modern world and our modern way of thinking about how B2B brands grow. Other measures that might be more aligned to more recently established ways of thinking. If you think about the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, for example, or Byron Sharp's How How Brands Grow philosophy. The importance of mental and physical availability. So how top of mind is your brand and how easy it is for your brand to be found when a customer wants to make a purchasing decision. The importance of memorability. So how, how quickly does your brand come to mind when the category that you operate in is. Is thought about and distinctness as well, as opposed to differentiation. So thinking about how distinct your brand is as far as its proposition, but also just how, how it shows up in the market visually and and otherwise. So we need to be thinking about those measures. How available is our brand in different purchasing situations, different category entry points, how responsive are we throughout key points in the customer journey, how easy it is to do business with the brand and how recognizable are our brand assets. And I've used the word brand about 10 times there. But it's a key point because there's been a tendency to separate brand and CX in how we think about B2B. I don't think they can be separated at all. I think it all feeds back to the customer experience. How your brand shows up outside of the purchasing journey in your communication, your marketing, brand visuals, brand identity. In addition to the more traditionally thought of touch points of I had a problem, so I called my customer service rep or I ordered a product or I had my product delivered those Things are important, but you also have to tie in how your brand shows up in various ways to customers. And then finally, and I know I'm going on a bit here, but just thinking about key frameworks to make the research more actionable. So some examples that we really like are revenue at risk. So linking customer experience measures with the revenue of that customer. The idea being that detractors, those customers that are providing you with low scores are at a really high risk of defecting and therefore that revenue that you have from that customer is at risk. There's nothing like putting a dollar sign or a pound sign or a euro sign behind a piece of research that will make an executive leadership team sit up straight. It's all well and good saying your net promoter score has gone down from 37 to 24, but if you say the impact of that is that we have $114 million of revenue at risk, someone's going to listen to that message. So revenue at risk, then we've got momentum matrix. Now that's a measure of your brand's perceived momentum. Are you perceived to be on the way up, on the way down, or holding firm relative to the competition as well because you don't exist in a vacuum? And then very quickly going back to the idea that customer needs assessment is a really important part of cx, we really like models like the KANO framework to think about the hierarchy of customer needs. What are the core entry level hygiene factors, what are some of the higher order needs and what are those differentiators, the things that can help make our brand distinct from the competition. So I mean, plenty to think about there, Jen, but we've still really only covered what we see as the core parts of the program. Still loads of work to do to recognize the value of CX research, turning data into insight and then turning insight into action and to then keep that momentum going over time. This isn't a one and done thing. We want these programs to be successful for years and years and years. So what do you think are some of the things that B2B companies can do to achieve that longer term thinking more aspirationally now that longer term success with CX measurement. So I think the first thing really to think about is customer engagement and keeping that customer engagement with the program over time because you want to be able to go back to your customers maybe a year later, ask them again how their experience is, what they're thinking about at the moment, what their needs are. You want them to want to give you that information over time as well. So I think really keeping that momentum with the customers and that engagement, one of the key things that you can do for this, I think works really well is having campaigns which around you said we did. So maybe a little bit after the program has finished, you've collected your feedback and you've had a chance to digest what that feedback was and come up with some clear action plans and of what you're going to do in terms of addressing the customer feedback. It's really good to share that with customers. So sending out some communications to say, look, here's what you said in the feedback that you gave. Here are our points that we need to improve and we're acknowledging those points and this is what we are then going to do about it. I think that really helps customers think that their responses are being listened to, the actual actions are being taken from the feedback that they've given to you. I think as well also something that some of our clients do is something called closing the loop. So if a customer has given maybe negative feedback, lower scores and that customer has allowed us to share that with the client, then really kind of going back to them and finding, finding out what they can do to improve that. So closing the loop between that negative feedback and actually going to them and saying this is what we're going to do about it. I think just customers really need to see that their feedback is being used, it's being valued and it's turning into actions as well. I mean, we see the power of that, don't we, when we're doing multi year customer experience programmes with our clients. If the client is really successful in closing that loop with the customer, the customer feels listened to, they see the value in their time given to participate in the research exercise. Next time you see the response rates really skyrocket and the richness of insight just really improves as a result as well. It strikes me though that could we apply the same principle to internal engagement? I mean, how can CX leaders within B2B orgs ensure that teams and internal stakeholders can continue to be bought in for the long haul? Yeah, that's a really good point because I know we spoke about at the start how important it is to have stakeholders involved with the research so that they are on board with the program, they want to action it afterwards. So it's definitely key for keeping everybody internally engaged with the program as well. And I think one way that you can do this is to refresh the survey each year. So you want to have maybe your key metrics that you're tracking but you don't want the survey to become stale, to become old. So having room for some, maybe guest questions that focus on a real key topic that's important to the organization at that moment in time, that can be something that can keep it fresh, can keep everybody engaged with it, and make sure it's still relevant for the business. I think as well, if there's any opportunity to integrate the customer experience data that we're getting back with anything else that's happening internally, if there's any other data that can be brought into it so different teams can see how it fits and works of what they're doing as well. I think one of the most important things is just really keeping that employee engagement and celebrating success stories as well as I think this really goes to kind of creating that culture of customer experience within the organization. So not just having it as a program that we do once a year, it comes around and then nobody thinks about it again, but really embedding customer experience into the culture of the organization. Ways in which that companies can do this are creating training videos around customer experience, creating a customer experience function, and ambassadors who are going to be championing the customer and be that voice of the customer within different meeting scenarios within the organization. This actually reminds me of one of our clients. They really did take customer experience to the next level and embed it within their culture. So creating training videos around customer experience that all new starters had to do and had to watch. So really just going beyond the program and embedding it within the culture so that everybody's involved with it. I love that idea, Jen. And I think that a few other examples spring to my mind as to what. What leading businesses do to put the customer first. And it can be. There's lots of different things you can do, whether it's creating CX champions or as you say, a customer experience function within the business, you want to. You want to make sure that it becomes. It's almost like moving it from something that's a discretionary, almost optional thing to the core part of your business's strategy. If that's the hub and everything else is the spokes of the wheel, then I think companies that think that way are likely to be very successful. I mean, one of my clients that we've worked with for years and years and years, they make sure that there's an actual physical cutout of the customer Persona in every single meeting room. So that when you sit and you think about finance or training or this new product or service that you're developing, whatever it might be the customer has a seat at the table and you have to think about, well, what would the customer think about this? How is this going to affect their experience? Because again, if you put that first and foremost, everything else flows from that. Profit margins, product success, et cetera, et cetera. It all flows from the customer actually feeling as though their needs align with what you've got to offer them and that they're listened to and looked after. We're talking now, I suppose, about what leading world class businesses and B2B brands do. So have you got any other examples of what they're doing to stay ahead? To get ahead and stay ahead? Yeah, I think it's really taking customer experience out of maybe the PowerPoint that you've got of your metrics and really bringing it to life. So really trying to find a way to move from just having it as that central PowerPoint report. So thinking around things like infographics, videos, audios, creating your Personas as we've spoken about, to really just bring it to life for people within the organization, I think that's really key. So getting it out of a PowerPoint report, I think as well, what's really important is actually driving action from the program. So if people can see the actions are being taken from the research, from the customer experience program that you've set up, then I think it's definitely more successful going forwards in the future as well. So this could be things like workshops, coming up with new ideas, figuring out what businesses want to do to kind of implement change across the business to bring that customer experience centrally into their culture and how they're going to improve experience for their customers going forwards as well. Love it. Totally agree, Jen. So Connor, thank you for joining me today and talking about customer experience. I think we've covered a lot of different topics going all the way from what does customer experience look like currently in B2B markets, all the way through to laying the foundations, developing your program and then taking it from a program into something that's a lot bigger than that program and really embedded within your organization. So if you've enjoyed today's podcast episode and you want to listen to more, make sure you rate, review and subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks so much, Jen. Thanks everyone.