A good rollercoaster ride is one where you have no idea what to expect next. You usually expect the worst. You almost lose your lunch more than once as you are practically flung out of the car. There are exhilarating moments that can be wildly exciting, but they are interspersed with fear, apprehension, and even screaming. Is this how your customers experience your business? Fun seekers may go back to ride that rollercoaster again and again, but think about businesses that depend on you for their livelihood – a little too much excitement perhaps?
Business to business (B2B) companies can achieve the benefits of a strong customer experience in customer loyalty, buying preferences, and referrals to other customers. However, the relationship with the customer is far more complex than when compared with consumer product companies. B2B companies must go above and beyond doing the minimum to meet the customer’s transactional needs. B2B customer loyalty is all about being committed to a complete, systematic and relentless dedication to an idea. That is, the experience that is expressed in every way that touches a customer by every employee, consistently across all forms of communication, and for the lifetime of the customer. B2B companies often stumble when they fail to align their customer facing operations and people with the customer experience promised by the company.
Customers of B2B firms believe their service experience is the sum of every form of communication they receive from the business, and every interaction that they have with the company. And this point of view lasts forever, so that errors committed in the past will always remain part of the customer’s perception of their experience with the business. This remains true regardless of how well the business may be performing at present. Many companies place a heavy reliance on customer service centers responding to customer calls and resolving issues quickly, assuming customers will then be happy with their business overall. Delivering an experience that is consistent with your customer promise across every touch point with customers is the first step to truly differentiating your business. When all those interfaces are aligned and delivering a consistent experience and message to your customers, then you will achieve a high level of operating efficiency. If just one interface fails to deliver on the customer promise, then you have to spend time and money correcting errors and inconsistencies. This impacts directly on customer satisfaction and retention, willingness to buy, direct costs required to repair or rework, and in overall financial performance as vital energy in the form of human and financial resources are redirected to address the deficiencies.
In B2B customer relationships, the goal is to develop a long term sustained relationship with the customer. The longer the customer is retained, generally the more profitable the relationship, and the greater the ability to continue to produce revenue from that customer. Have you ever heard in your business that the customer was sold something that differs from your ability to deliver? Sometimes product features, business terms, implementation schedules, service levels, all apparently promised by a sales person, and yet are not consistent with the current capability of the business to deliver. Each one of these issues requires energy and investment by the business to overcome in order to get the customer on an acceptable long term path, and with slightly reset expectations. The customer has already experienced significant inconsistencies between the promise and the experience of that promise, before the relationship really gets under way. The cost of building loyalty with that customer is very high and efforts will continue to be expended over a long period of time as the company endeavors to restore its reputation with that customer.
The costs of poor performance are tangible and often already measured by companies, including: rework, error correction, concessions, lost opportunities, and customer attrition. Each one of these increases your cost of service, selling, support, and overhead as remedies are implemented to correct them. These costs can have an exponential impact across the business: that is, each element or system that fails, or any inconsistency between them or against the customer promise tends to compound the negative perception of the customer. Why is there such a compounding effect? Remember that for business to business customers, the sum of all of their experiences and all the communications with your entire firm over time serve to create their perception of your company. When one element disappoints the customer, it is automatically compounded by another element – even though they may seem totally unconnected from inside your company. Left unchecked, the customer’s disappointment will grow and negative perceptions will expand beyond simply the issues at hand to become a general perception of your whole business.
Many businesses have sophisticated processes, software and even six sigma quality improvement programs designed to measure and improve that performance and increase profitability. These initiatives do not often measure systems across the enterprise and rarely do they measure the effectiveness and consistency of communication and performance of all of these systems with the intended customer promise of the business. Managing each issue in isolation will result in a significant drain on energy and the resources required to deliver sustained profitable growth. Align all systems and people in your company so they can focus most of their energy to serving the customer better, innovating new solutions, beating the competition, and moving the bottom line up.
© OneAccord 2006.
