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Customer Touchpoints that Still Shape B2B Perceptions
As B2B providers embrace automation, key customer touchpoints still shape perceptions and customer satisfaction. This post highlights the type of touchpoints outside of your solution that customers care about—and how to identify the ones that matter most.
Read MoreInclude Jobs-to-be-Done in Your Customer Satisfaction Surveys
B2B solution providers can enrich the insights from their customer satisfaction surveys and conversations by taking a cue from product marketing and adding a few questions about the customer’s jobs-to-be-done.
Read MoreHow to improve B2B customer retention rates
Retention has long been a focus for B2B product marketers. In a subscription business focused on ARR, customer retention is a key metric. Further, many B2B companies operate in finite markets that target a specific industry, account size, or other niche. A customer retention problem effectively reduces the market size and growth becomes unsustainable.
Read MoreIs NPS a useful indicator of a target acquisition’s value?
A recent Wall Street Journal article called attention to the “cultlike” following that NPS has garnered among CEOs in recent years. Their analysis found that in earnings calls by S&P 500 companies, “NPS” or “net promoter” were cited 150 times by 50 different companies. The article goes on to question whether companies have put too much emphasis on the one number system that is Net Promoter.
Read MoreLook beyond product for drivers of B2B satisfaction and value
Customer experience, by definition, incorporates all aspects of a company’s offering and cuts across organizational boundaries. Yet, B2B vendors continue to focus on the product as the main driver of customer satisfaction and value. Research by Isurus and other leading consultants shows how a more inclusive analysis of customer experience reveals more accurate and actionable results.
Read MoreAre you hard to work with? It matters.
Do your internal processes pull customers and prospects closer to you or do they push them away Research shows that companies and individuals that find a vendor easy to work with demonstrate higher levels of loyalty and likelihood to recommend. They use the vendor more fully, e.g. buy more products, use more features. They will even use technically inferior products and services when a vendor makes their lives easier.
Read MoreDoes your VOC program encourage purchase behavior?
Your NPS or customer satisfaction survey can increase the frequency and number of purchases a customer makes over time. Research by Sterling Bone of Utah State’s Huntsman School of Business indicates that starting customer feedback surveys focused on what you do well increases NPS and satisfaction scores in the short-term, and can increase the frequency and number of purchases a customer makes with you over the long run.
Read MoreMake your product’s champion, don’t search for one
Conventional wisdom says the best way to sell a B2B product or service is to find the highest level champion in the prospect organization and follow their lead. But does that approach really work? Separate studies by the Corporate Executive Board (published in the April 2015 edition of the Harvard Business Review) and the media group B2B Marketing (published in its 2015 Buyersphere Report) indicate that this may be easier in theory than in practice.
Read MoreConsistency of Experience and Customer Satisfaction
The March 2014 edition of McKinsey Quarterly makes the case that providing a consistent experience across all customer interactions is more important to satisfaction and loyalty than the performance in individual interactions. This runs counter to conventional market research wisdom, which says that not all customer experiences are equal in driving customer satisfaction and that the goal of research is to uncover the key drivers. While we are not ready to endorse McKinsey’s point of view just yet, it does deserve consideration.
Read MoreThe value of NPS in B2B enterprise markets
A client recently asked our opinion of the value of the Net Promoter Score. As with all flavor-of-the-month management technique we followed the pattern of curiosity, skepticism, and finally came to a set of beliefs regarding where NPS provides the most value – and where it does not. Our beliefs are based on our experience helping B2B enterprise clients implement and interpret NPS results.
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