Avoid Churn: A B2B Guide to Voice of the Customer

Customer Experience, Avoid Churn: A B2B Guide to Voice of the Customer Customer experience (CX) and Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs are fast-growing segments of a core business strategy for B2B companies. VoC programs work well for B2B enterprises because capturing and acting on customer feedback is critical to understanding the complex decision-making process.

Due to the many people involved in the buying process, businesses must create tailored feedback mechanisms and use a variety of feedback channels. Follow up and closing the loop with stakeholders will have a significant impact on building long term customer relationships.

Critical aspects of VoC for B2B include:

Involvement of sales: In B2B, the sales force should be highly involved in the execution of the VoC program.
Multiple customers: The multiple influencers involved in buying decisions means there are multiple customers within a single account, all with competing priorities.
Account value: B2B accounts are worth millions. A B2B-er can’t afford to let any account fall through the cracks.
Loyalty measures: “Likely to recommend” measures (i.e., Net Promoter Score — NPS) metrics can be much less relevant in a B2B climate than in B2C, for reasons we’ll discuss later.

Changing the Company Culture

The foundation of a good VoC/CX program in a B2B company requires trying to change the company culture — both from the top down as well as from the bottom up. Marketing your program internally will go a long way toward accomplishing this.

Brand your VoC program

Promote your VoC program by giving it a memorable brand name (CompanyX Cares, Customer Champion, etc.) and use it (and an eye-catching logo) on a variety of promotional materials such as training manuals, shirts, portfolios, pens, mugs or anything that your team will use daily.

Get executive support

Though executives appreciate clever branding, the more success stories with quantifiable results you can circulate, the more support you will garner. Ideally, you will want to integrate your program into as many corporate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as possible (not just in the sales team’s KPIs), so be sure to involve executives throughout all divisions of the company.

Offer educational tools

Educational tools such as newsletters, training guides and videos are useful in the branding process and absolutely critical to the effectiveness and “buy in” of your program. Use them with supporting resources such as survey tools, customer templates, phone call scripts, meeting templates and team mentoring efforts.

Get grassroots support

Though executive buy-in is critical to getting a VoC program off the ground, grassroots support is just as crucial to making it a success. Without it, “push” from the top will be resented, and those who are actually implementing it won’t take the program seriously.

A Process That Works for Sales

Sales teams need support tools to nurture proper habits. They know how to sell, but they might not know how to elicit feedback (especially negative comments), listen carefully, and conscientiously and non-defensively follow up.

Here are some ideas for creating good habits and encouraging support of the VoC program:

Encourage sales reps to provide feedback and suggestions. This creates instant buy-in by making them part of the process.
Help them break the ice with customers by providing email templates, phone call scripts and role paying sessions.
Give your sales team real-time access to customer feedback. Knowing they can analyze and respond to customer issues faster than the competition gives them confidence to make those important customer calls.
Instill a strategic focus by streamlining all VoC processes. Choose the right channels to communicate with sales. Broadcast voicemails and try newsletters to keep the teams up to date — but make them informative.

Create incentives based on survey response rates

Salespeople are the superheroes of most B2B companies. They make the rain that fuels growth. Your program should focus on the real payoff for sales: decreased churn and increased sales. If it facilitates better selling, salespeople will get engaged.

One B2B company tied survey response rates to annual goals, and the company expects reps to survey each and every customer contact. Only those sales reps who reach a predetermined response rate receive a bonus. Incentives based on response rates are much more effective than those based on engagement or NPS scores in meeting these goals because of a focus on participation versus good or bad scores.

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

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Dec 10, 2013