Have you ever had that feeling where you looked around a room and wondered if everyone was thinking the same thing, but no one was saying anything?
The Emperor’s New Clothes, the “elephant in the room”—take your pick!
I think there’s an elephant in the CX room, so to speak.
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to 50+ customer experience (CX) professionals at business-to-business (B2B) software firms and we’ve been having that feeling a lot. With competition more fierce than ever, all of us instinctively, obviously continue to prioritize CX. Yet we’re seeing varying results, especially when compared to our business-to-consumer (B2C) counterparts.
We know that trying the same things again—another journey mapping workshop, launching a new survey, force fitting the latest B2C trend—is not the answer. We’re all thinking the same thing: if we’re going to improve the B2B experience, we’re going to need to explore B2B specific best practices.
But this is wild territory. B2C has decades of refinement and standardization in CX. B2B CX is relatively uncultivated.
That’s why Gainsight is partnering with some of the most preeminent leaders in the industry to get to the core of what this B2B identity in CX will be. We’ll be posting content and best practices to dive into the nuances of delivering winning customer experiences in B2B environments. We’ll cover what journey mapping means when you have complex multi-product relationships. How to calculate your NPS score when you have multiple stakeholders and personas engaged with your company. How to close the loop when cross-functional teams on both sides need to work together. What data to use to be proactive in delivering success to your clients.
Here’s an index of each of these posts:
The Importance Of Importance
Jon Klein, Topline Strategies
In B2C, no two customers are alike, but all are equal. That makes it easy to scale your CX—one size fits most. When it comes to B2B, you can’t make that assumption. You have to segment. How do you intelligently group your customer base to spend more resources on the most strategic clients and fewer on the long tail? This post will give you a highly tactical playbook.
5 Considerations For Your B2B Customer Experience Program In 2020
Evan Klein, Satrix Solutions
Most companies are copying and pasting B2C playbooks onto their B2B CX organization. But what if you started from first principles? Satrix Solutions is a B2B CX consulting firm, and this five-step playbook is a great checklist for you as you spin up or improve your org.
Measuring B2b Cx In Saas: What Are The Metrics That Matter?
Jay Nathan, Customer Imperative
Quantifying your team and your strategy is mission-critical to any function, and CX is no different. But what are the most relevant numbers to benchmark your team against itself and the rest of the industry? This is a super-detailed look at the metrics that matter most for B2B CX. You’ll probably be referring back to this one often!
Why your B2B journey mapping effort is doomed to fail
Justin Zacks, Method Garage
Take a good, hard look at your journey mapping process. What was your methodology? What were your motivators? What were your key performance indicators? How did you inventory your customers? If you didn’t follow a process like this one from Method Garage, you probably are doomed to fail. This might be controversial, but it’s 100% on the money.
We hope this will be a good forum to explore the future for B2B CX, one where the work apps we use Monday to Friday are just as engaging as the ones on Saturday.
