How to Optimize the
B to B Customer Journey

Why is it so important?

Customer experience is more important than ever before, with customers saying they’ll pay up to 16% more for a better customer experience.1 B to B companies are prudent to invest more in optimizing the customer journey to encourage and maintain greater loyalty with their business partners.

• It’s a model built upon relationships.
  In B to B, experiences between businesses and their customers can last for years, or even decades, leaving more room for bonds to be built or broken.
• There’s little room for error.
  It can be difficult to find replacements in a B to B setting as there tends to be a distributor or decentralized sales network, but purchase orders are often of such great scale that the potential loss from a mistake is an even higher risk.
• A good customer experience is never complete.
  The customer interaction doesn’t end when the sales transaction is over. It’s important to continually facilitate feedback loops that enhance the experience for every customer, to drive repeat sales.
• B to B buying cycles are longer than ever.
  And with technology expediting transaction periods, it also has the potential to decrease the number of touchpoints along the path to purchase.

How do you deliver an exceptional customer experience across the entire journey?

Know Your Customers

By better understanding the challenges your customers are facing, you’re able to identify and reinforce trust in critical moments. Authenticity is at the heart of a beloved customer experience and depth of understanding is critical to express a genuine desire to improve it.

It’s critical to acknowledge and understand that your buyers are under a lot of pressure. They’re responsible for spending their company’s money wisely and for increasing efficiencies across their organization. And this stress isn’t just at the point of purchase; it lingers throughout the product life cycle. It’s important to proactively identify and eliminate pressure points.

Ways to Implement

Primary or Secondary Customer Research

Customer Insights Development

Make an Impact at Each Touchpoint

The importance of leaving a meaningful impression can never be undervalued. Creating a memorable experience across touchpoints reinforces the importance of the partnership on both ends. Within the customer decision-making process, there are so many ways an agreement can veer in the wrong direction.

Identifying the key moments across the journey that could be detrimental to the experience is just as crucial as highlighting those that might be more obvious (the first point of engagement, awareness tactics, post-purchase appreciation, retention reminders). Finding new avenues of communication in which you can delight a customer when they least expect it could help cement a deeper relationship and ultimately strengthen their brand loyalty.

Ways to Implement

Competitive Landscape Audit

Customer Journey Map

Integrated Marketing Plan

Make Customer-Centric Goals

Every single interaction a customer has with your brand contributes to their perception of your value, potential and ability to perform as a successful business partner. Making them feel valued, heard and understood starts with the tone of your touchpoints and ends with the attitude your sales force chooses to take when interacting with customers.

Define your barometers of success not around sales and earnings, but instead around impressions left and brand equity gained. While shifting customer perceptions may be challenging to assess, it’s of the utmost importance. Shifting your organization’s barometer for success from sales number to long-term engagement and loyalty has the ability to positively affect all three, as long as it’s done well.

Ways to Implement

Strategic Messaging Guidelines

Brand Personality and Tone Evolution

Custom ROI Dashboard

Curious about how we do it?

Contact us and lets talk about how the BrandJuice team can help you deliver a more customer-centric experience from start to finish. 

Sources: 1. PWC 2. Walker