KS&R - Blogs - Jim Kraus

There has been much written about the customer experience over the last few years. During this time I've noticed two things:

First, very little attention has been paid to the customer experience in business markets – undoubtedly many of us have heard about, or experienced for ourselves, the pleasure of a Zappos, Apple, or Southwest Airlines "experience" when purchasing, using, or receiving support for their products and services. But far fewer of us it appears, have been as cognizant of these types of experiences in our business lives. My personal opinion is that this is because companies that sell products and services to other businesses are just now waking up to the importance of delivering an outstanding customer experience – more on this in a minute.

Second, there has been a significant amount of debate as to the definition of the customer experience. While this may be regarded as semantics, it is a foundational step for B2B companies that are yearning for new ways to differentiate themselves to drive growth and improve customer loyalty and are starting to look at building outstanding customer experiences to do so.

Defining Customer Experience

So let's address the definition of the customer experience first as developing a well grounded definition that is both understood and embraced across the organization is critical. Loose, or worse, inconsistent definitions can lead to confusion, wasted efforts, lack of buy-in, and ultimately failure (or diminished returns) in relation to any customer experience improvement efforts.

Webster defines an ex•pe•ri•ence as "something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through". By extension, a "customer experience" is that which your customers experience when interacting with your brand:

At the broadest level, this includes the totality of all touch points your brand has with its customers including 1) exposure and reactions to advertising, marketing, and public relations, 2) two-way interactions with your organization's sellers, customer service reps, business partners, website, etc., and 3) engagement with the products and services you offer, i.e., use of them.
At a cognitive level, this means that which your customers recognize and associate value with in their interactions with your brand. For example, interacting with a knowledgeable sales representative that fully addresses all of your questions, anticipates other needs you may have, and proactively makes thoughtful suggestions for how his or her company's products and services can meet them is undoubtedly a source of value recognized and appreciated by many customers.
At emotional level, this means the attitudes and feelings a customer has interacting with your brand before, during, and after "experiencing" your brand through these touch points. A customer that encounters a highly competent sales representative, as previously described, is likely to feel a heightened sense of comfort in their purchase decision and in the brand overall – both highly desirable outcomes.

One of the most useful ways to think about the customer experience is to think about your own interactions with one or two different brands used in your personal and/or business lives – exposure to advertising and other forms of communications, interactions with employees and business partners of the firm, usage of their products and services, after sale support received, etc. This is a simple and highly useful way to stay grounded from a definitional standpoint and provides the right mindset when thinking about the experience of your own organization's customers.

The Importance of an Outstanding Customer Experience in Business Markets

While more and more B2C companies are starting to understand the importance of delivering an outstanding customer experience across key brand touch points, fewer have yet to embrace (or at least fully realize) its benefits in business markets. There are minimally two reasons for this:

First, the consumption of business products and services is just beginning to change in many industries. One example is cloud computing in the technology industry. Traditionally, if a company needed additional processing power or data storage capacity it would purchase its own servers. Today, many companies purchase this capacity as a service from another provider that owns and manages the servers and delivers this capacity to its customers through the Internet (or "the cloud"). The ability to offer a great customer experience in how these providers sell, provision, and support their cloud computing customers is more important then ever before in order to remain competitive. Conversely, a bad customer experience can significantly jeopardize future cloud computing sales.
Second, business markets are just beginning to realize that a great customer experience can be a formidable source of competitive advantage. It is increasingly getting difficult to separate from the pack based on product features, price, or service alone. Delivering an outstanding customer experience – in totality across all key touch points – is still a relatively new concept and difficult (but definitely not impossible) to achieve. As a result, it is just starting to be recognized as a viable source of differentiation in business markets.

Notably, while B2B companies that are on the forefront of delivering an excellent customer experience view it as an opportunity to drive growth and claim leadership in key markets, fear is also a powerful motivator. Cumbersome purchase, implementation, and support processes that were tolerated in the past won't be in the future leading to lost customers and bad word-of-mouth.

Next Steps

In my upcoming series of blogs, and a webinar we are finishing up on the B2B Customer Experience due out in June, we will examine the following questions which will hopefully serve as a useful input in your own customer experience initiatives:

Why is the customer experience important (why should you care)?
What are the key elements of a customer experience program?
What are the steps and approaches to defining YOUR customers` "ideal" experience? Why is this a critical first step in the process?
There are multiple touch points in the customer experience – where do we start?
How do we measure and continuously assess how well we are delivering on an outstanding customer experience?
How can we link an ideal customer experience to desired customer behaviors – repeat purchases, improved loyalty, more likely to recommend, etc?
Why is incorporating your employees` perspective important? How can their input best be collected and leveraged effectively?
How can social media be used to understand the ideal customer experience? How can it be leveraged to assess your performance and that of your competitors?
How can all of this information be brought together effectively – understood and used throughout the organization to improve performance?

Final Thoughts

Perhaps the most encouraging thing to remember about the customer experience is that, with enough forethought and focused effort, it can be: 1) well defined, 2) tightly choreographed throughout the organization, and 3) ultimately delivered to customers on a consistent basis to provide them with outstanding experiences when interacting with your brand. This in turn will result in increased sales, improved customer retention, and positive word-of-mouth that might otherwise be difficult to attain.

"What's your favorite type of research study to be involved in and why do you like it so much?"

After my initial surprise at the question dissipated (it's not often someone asks me what I LIKE to do!), I easily replied "content marketing research". Why? It's fun to do and, done well, yields results that are directly and tightly linked to actual marketing activities that improve business performance. If the ultimate objective of a research study or program is to improve an organization's marketing capabilities; provide it with targeted information to leverage in the market; and allow it to make better decisions to improve performance, then content marketing research is a tough act to follow.

Let me take a quick step back for definitional purposes. So what is "content marketing"? Ultimately, it's the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content to attract and/or retain customers. This content may include:

Content marketing research studies provide robust, credible, and highly targeted market insights to feed all of these different types of content. Some of our clients conduct research to feed a specific marketing deliverable (e.g., a presentation at a conference or a thought leadership paper). Others develop entire marketing programs where research results feed various types of materials and deliverables used throughout the course of the year.

First, they start with the end in mind which exponentially increases the chances the research results will be used. Rather than starting with a set of exploratory, open-ended questions about the market (the starting point for most market research), these studies require marketers to think specifically about what type of answer the research will yield and how specifically will they use that answer in their marketing programs and content when they get it back.

Second, designed well with significant collaboration between the research team and marketers, they can feed various and multiple forms of marketing content that is used for a significant stretch of time. As a result, the ROI on these types of studies is often high and easier to measure.

Finally, they harness the creativity of all involved with the research. How can a particular question, that yields a particular insight, be used in a particular piece of marketing content? How can we explore the results of the research in new/different ways to yield "nuggets" that feed other content? With some creativity and a strong understanding of what will resonate with prospects and customers, "it's the gift that keeps on giving".

I'm grateful to the person who asked me the original question (what types of research do I like to do) – it reaffirmed for me why I still get a kick out of working in this profession.

As a Principal/Owner of KS&R, and member of its Board of Directors, my main focus is on business-to-business research, assisting our global clients improve performance through a more thorough understanding of their current and prospective customers and the markets they serve. As I plan to blog ever few weeks, I hope you check back often for updates. Feel free to respond with your comments and to let me know if there are specific topics you'd like me to discuss. You can reach me at jkraus@ksrinc.com.

As market research practitioners focused on global business markets, one of the areas we're often asked to examine is the decision processes of our client's customers (often referred to as "buyer behavior" or "customer behavior"). The need to understand buyer behavior is particularly acute in larger organizations with more complex decision processes and multiple influencers. Our clients typically ask us to help them better understand four key areas:

For our clients, these research activities ultimately inform the development of high performing marketing strategies, sales tactics, and customer value propositions. With tight alignment of research insights to marketing actions, these studies have led to increased revenue, shorter sales cycles, and improved marketing efficiencies/cost.

Unquestionably, one of the most striking and consistent findings of these inquiries has to do with time, or the lack thereof, of corporate decision makers. See if you can answer the following questions about your prospective business customers:

If your answer is no to most or all of these questions, you do not stand alone. Given corporate downsizing, heightened employee productivity expectations, and increased scrutiny on all purchases, it is increasingly difficult to develop business accounts as key decision makers simply do not have the time to:

These time constraint realities (if we can call them that based on our experience) point to several opportunities for business marketers who understand them and take advantage of what their competitors are likely not doing – namely:

Any of these steps, if done well, will increase your chances of opening new business accounts and further increasing share of wallet in existing ones. Importantly, each will indirectly have the effect of communicating to your customers (loud and clear!) that you understand "time is their enemy" and you have accepted it as an opportunity to earn their business.