If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) brand, you can’t afford to neglect your customer experience (CX). Why? Because how customers experience your product or service could make or break your business.

Let’s look at the numbers:

➡️ Companies that focus on customer experience see an 80% increase in revenue.

➡️ Almost 50% of customers left a brand they’d been loyal to due to poor CX.

➡️ Over 85% of consumers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

In a world where many B2B products and services are similar, how a company treats its customers can set it apart and provide a competitive edge.

Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C) interactions, where emotional appeal and immediate gratification often drive consumer decisions, B2B relationships are about long-term value. They’re about trust and strategic partnerships.

Understanding the dynamics of B2B customer experience is essential for businesses aiming to foster customer loyalty, drive growth, and gain a competitive edge.

In this article, we’ll explore what customer experience is and why it’s so important in the world of B2B. We’ll also provide five top strategies for getting customer experience right in 2024.

What Is Customer Experience (CX)?

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CX is about how your customers experience your brand, customer service, product, or service.

B2B customer experience refers to a business’s overall impression and interaction with another business. It includes every touchpoint from the initial contact to post-purchase support.

Unlike the B2C world, which focuses on quick, individual sales, B2B CX is about building and maintaining a deeper, ongoing relationship. These relationships are built on understanding each other’s business needs, providing solutions, and ensuring consistent support.

Why Customer Experience Matters in B2B

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Customer experience is extremely important in the B2B sector and has become a major factor in gaining a competitive advantage. Over 70% of customers say that CX is the number one thing they consider when deciding whether to purchase from a company.

B2B customer expectations are often influenced by their experiences as everyday consumers in the B2C world.

By regularly interacting with various businesses, they become acutely aware of what makes a good and bad service.

As a result, these customers expect a similar level of service in their professional interactions as they would experience as consumers.

If you want to retain your customers and keep them loyal to your brand, you must build solid relationships with them. Your customer experience helps maintain strong customer relationships and reduces churn rates, ensuring long-term partnerships.

Additionally, satisfied customers are more likely to refer other businesses to a company. This leads to new business opportunities for you. A strong reputation for an excellent customer experience can be a powerful referral marketing tool.

A Positive Customer Experience Is Good for Your Bottom Line

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Customer-centric brands report profits that are 60% higher than those of businesses that fail to focus on CX. Additionally, 41% of companies that focus on CX achieve at least 10% revenue growth.

On the other hand, a poor customer experience can be detrimental. In fact, 86% of consumers will leave a brand they previously trusted after two poor experiences. Bad customer experiences could cost organizations $3.7 trillion annually.

Investing in customer experience is a strategic move that can significantly boost your financial performance and market standing.

5 Strategies to Improve Your B2B Customer Experience

Now that you know why providing an excellent customer experience is so important, let’s unpack some strategies you can use to get it right:

1️⃣ Map out the customer journey

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To improve your customer experience, it’s crucial to first understand the steps a buyer goes through when dealing with your business.

This journey, from the first contact to providing ongoing support, is key to understanding how to improve your customer experience.

Stages of the B2B customer journey

Here’s what the customer journey typically looks like for a B2B brand:

Let’s break down each stage:

💡 Awareness: This is the starting point where a potential client becomes aware of your business. It could be through marketing efforts, word of mouth, or their own research. At this stage, the goal is to stand out and make a strong first impression.

🔍 Consideration: Once aware, the potential client starts considering your products or services as a solution to their problem. They might compare your offerings with competitors, look at reviews, or engage with your sales teams. Here, providing detailed and relevant information is key.

✅ Decision: This stage involves the client deciding to go ahead with purchasing or subscribing to your product or service. The focus should be on making the purchasing process as smooth as possible, addressing any concerns, and reinforcing the value of your solution.

🛠️ Implementation: After their purchase, the client will implement your product or service. Your role is to ensure a seamless integration and onboarding process by offering training, resources, and support as needed.

🤝 Support and maintenance: Ongoing support is crucial in B2B relationships. This includes customer service, regular check-ins, and providing updates or improvements to your products or services. The goal here is to drive customer satisfaction so that they’ll keep coming back for more.

🔄 Renewal or upsell: The final stage involves renewing the contract or introducing additional products or services to your customers. Here, your customer success team should demonstrate ongoing value and deepen the relationship.

Mapping this journey is crucial for a few reasons:

Understanding customer needs and expectations 

By mapping their customer journey, businesses gain insights into their customers’ needs, pain points, and expectations at various stages. This understanding is vital for tailoring products, services, and interactions to meet customer requirements.

Identifying key touchpoints

The process helps identify the critical points where customers interact with the business.

These touchpoints are opportunities to influence the customer’s perception and decision-making. Optimizing these interactions is essential for a better customer experience.

Identifying pain points and opportunities 

Mapping the journey helps pinpoint areas where customers might face difficulties or frustrations. For example, the checkout process on your website may be deterring customers from making a purchase with you because it is too complex.

Addressing these pain points can significantly enhance the customer experience. It also uncovers opportunities for innovation and improvement in products, services, and processes.

2️⃣ Provide great customer service

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Time is a precious resource for your customers. If placing an order takes too long or has time restrictions, you will lose consumers. The goal is to provide an efficient and fast service, both virtual and on-site:

Try using automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to create a more seamless customer experience.

This can include chatbots for 24/7 customer interaction, algorithms for predictive customer needs, and digital systems for streamlined communication.

A great example of a B2B chatbot used to navigate a specific website’s content is HubSpot, a leading marketing, sales automation, and customer services company. When you open their webpage, visitors can immediately find the chatbot in the right-hand corner:

The customer-centric chatbot will direct customers to specific information to answer their questions and lead them to important calls to action (CTAs). For example, the first step leads the customer to products, pricing, and educational content.

If you want to learn more about their products, the chatbot gives you the option of starting a free trial or speaking with someone on their team. After that, visitors can directly chat with a team member or leave a contact email in case they need to leave the conversation.

This chatbot is a great example because it combines personalization and efficiency. It makes each visitor feel that they can navigate the page to meet their individual goals.

The chatbot offers targeted options by simplifying navigation, improving customer service, and providing a seamless experience for buyers.

Here are some other ways to provide good customer service:

✔️ Ensure quick and efficient response times: B2B clients often rely on prompt service to maintain their operations. Ensuring that customer inquiries, requests, or issues are addressed quickly and efficiently is crucial. Customers are 2.4 times more likely to stick to a brand when their problems are solved quickly.

✔️ Train your team effectively: Your customer service team should be well trained—not only in your products and services but also in communication and problem-solving skills. They should be able to handle a wide range of scenarios with professionalism and competence. Your service should be so good that customers recognize your efforts in going the extra mile.

✔️ Seamless payment and delivery systems: In B2B transactions, a seamless payment and delivery system is key to a positive experience. Streamline the entire order-to-cash cycle by integrating it with your business payment solutions and delivery partners. Efficiently manage all aspects—from order dispatch to handling returns—to maintain trust and reliability with your business clients.

3️⃣ Collect customer feedback

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Another good strategy to improve the B2B customer experience is to ask your customers what they think about your brand and the experience you provide.

It’s common for customers to be more vocal about negative experiences, often through online reviews or word of mouth. However, many customers don’t directly communicate their issues to the company.

This trend highlights the need for businesses to actively seek feedback and be attentive to online reviews and social media for indirect signs of customer dissatisfaction.

Addressing negative feedback effectively by acknowledging and resolving issues can help maintain customer trust and potentially turn unhappy customers into loyal ones.

Here’s how to effectively implement and benefit from a feedback collection system:

Diverse feedback channels

Utilize multiple channels to collect feedback to accommodate different preferences and contexts. This might include surveys—which could be post-interaction or periodic—feedback forms on your website, direct emails, social media interactions, and even phone calls. Each channel can provide different types of customer insights.

Here are some types of surveys you could use to collect customer feedback:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys: Typically measured on a scale from one to five, these surveys can measure customer satisfaction with a specific interaction with your business or their overall experience.

• Net promoter score (NPS): Customers rate their experience on a scale of 0 to ten. Usually, they’re asked how likely they are to recommend your product or service to a friend or colleague.

• Customer effort score (CES): You can use these surveys to collect feedback on specific products or features. These scores are usually on a scale from one to five or one to 10.

• Post-interaction surveys: These are used to evaluate customer service interactions after a support call or chat session. They’re typically rated from one to five.

Collect customer feedback regularly

Customer feedback should be gathered consistently, not just when a problem arises.

Proactively seeking feedback at various stages of the customer journey helps in understanding your customers’ evolving needs and expectations.

Internal stakeholder feedback

It’s not just customers who can provide valuable insights. Employees, especially those who interact directly with customers (like sales and customer service teams), can offer crucial perspectives on customer needs, behaviors, and potential improvements.

You should collect feedback from multiple stakeholders rather than just customer perspectives.

Integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems

Integrate feedback collection with your customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Linking feedback to specific customer profiles and interactions allows for a more comprehensive view of the customer experience.

Take action

Collecting feedback is only valuable if it leads to action. Analyze the feedback you’ve gathered to identify common themes, areas for improvement, and potential opportunities.

This analysis should inform business decisions, service improvements, and strategic planning.

4️⃣ Create personalized experiences

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Customers demand more from brands now more than ever. They expect personalized experiences, and this isn’t something you can afford to ignore.

Over 68% of new customers say they’re more likely to purchase exclusively from brands that understand them and their needs. Additionally, almost 60% of consumers believe businesses should use the data they collect about them to personalize their experiences.

Personalization in the B2B customer journey is not just a nice-to-have marketing idea. It’s a critical component of a successful business strategy that drives engagement. It drives customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth.

It can improve the customer experience for B2B buyers in the following ways:

✔️ Building stronger relationships: In B2B, relationships are fundamental. Personalization demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of each customer’s unique business needs, fostering stronger, more meaningful relationships.

✔️ Increased engagement: Personalization ensures that the interactions and solutions offered are highly relevant to each specific customer.

✔️ Enhanced customer experience: Personalized experiences make customers feel valued and understood. This has the power to build strong customer relationships across longer customer journeys.

✔️ Improved customer retention rate: B2B markets often have higher barriers to entry and longer sales cycles than B2C markets. Personalization helps retain customers by continuously aligning your offerings with their evolving needs, fostering customer loyalty, and reducing customer churn.

Here’s how you can effectively integrate personalization into B2B customer experiences:

Collect and analyze customer data

Start by gathering data about your customers. This includes basic information like industry and company size. It also includes more detailed data like past purchases, interaction history, and preferences.

You can use analytics tools to gain insights from this customer data.

Segment your customers

Based on the data collected, segment your customers into groups with similar characteristics or needs. This allows for more targeted and relevant interactions rather than sending all your customers the same generic communication.

This can help to make customers feel valued rather than just another consumer.

Customize communication

Tailor your communication to match each customer segment’s specific needs and interests.

Use their name, reference their industry, and mention relevant products or services in your emails, newsletters, and other communications.

Personalize your website and online platforms

Use technology to create a personalized experience on your website.

This can include customized product recommendations, personalized content, and user-specific offers based on their browsing history and preferences.

More than 60% of consumers agree that personalized recommendations are better than general ones.

Develop tailored products and services

Offer customization options for your products or services to meet your customers’ specific needs. These could range from simple feature tweaks to entirely bespoke solutions.

Offer personalized content

Create content that speaks directly to the needs and interests of your customer segments. This could be targeted blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, or videos.

5️⃣ Educate and inform your customers with quality content

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Educating and informing customers with quality content is critical to enhancing the B2B customer experience.

This approach involves creating and distributing informative and valuable content that helps customers understand your products or services better and provides insights to help them in their business operations.

Here’s how to effectively educate and inform customers:

Understand customer needs and questions

Start by understanding your customers’ common questions, challenges, and knowledge gaps. This understanding can guide the creation of relevant and useful content for your audience.

Develop a variety of content types

Different customers prefer different types of content. Some may favor in-depth whitepapers and case studies, while others might prefer quick-read blogs, infographics, or instructional videos. Offering a mix of content types ensures you cater to diverse preferences.

Focusing on educating and informing your customers through quality content can enhance their experience, build trust, and position your company as a leader in your field.

Focus on providing value

Your content should aim to educate, inform, or solve problems, not just sell your product or service.

By providing value through your content, you establish your brand as a knowledgeable and trustworthy authority in your industry.

Leverage expertise

You should use your company expertise to elevate the content you produce.

Have knowledgeable team members contribute to content creation. This will ensure that the information you provide is accurate, original, and insightful. It will also help reflect your deep understanding of the industry.

Consistent and regular publishing

Maintain a consistent schedule for publishing new content. Regular updates keep your audience engaged and help establish your company as a reliable source of information.

Take Your B2B Customer Experience to the Next Level

The journey to enhancing customer experience requires a comprehensive approach that focuses on understanding the customer journey, providing excellent customer service, educating customers with great content, and continuously gathering and acting on feedback.

This dedication to customer experience is about meeting expectations and exceeding them, fostering lasting relationships, and driving business growth.

As businesses strive to adapt and excel in this area, it’s crucial to remember the power of choosing the right tools and strategies to make a significant impact.

If you’re looking to improve your customer experience, you need to explore tools that can help you create personalized experiences for your customers. The Hyperise toolkit can help you take your personalization to the next level.

Hyperise offers a suite of tools designed to enhance customer engagement through personalized images, GIFs, landing pages, and videos. These tools help create a more tailored and impactful customer interaction.

Visit our website and try Hyperise for free to discover how it can elevate your B2B customer experience.