How to Build a Successful B2B Customer Service Culture

Everybody knows that a B2B company that wants to develop exceptional customer experience (CX) must work on its culture. B2B companies need something of a cult if exceptional customer experience is going to take hold. They need people with a passion for great customer experience. These beliefs must be at the heart of a company’s philosophy, they need to influence all management decisions and all business functions. It is easy to say this and hard to execute. Businesses exist to grow and make a profit, and because the profit motive is so important, it is easy for something like service culture to be pushed backwards when there is a fight for funds.

So how is a customer service culture created in a B2B company? There are five steps:

Step 1: Engage the support of the CEO

The most frustrating thing about creating a customer service culture is that many companies believe they have one already. In a room of 100 B2B CEOs, more than half would raise their hands when asked if the company offers great customer experience. It is a bit like asking 100 car owners if they believe they have above-average driving skills. We are dangerously optimistic about our talents.

The acid test for any B2B CEO who claims that their company provides excellent customer service is, what priority does it have when the chips are down? What does the company say if a customer complains and wants a rebate? What does it do if profits are under pressure? How likely is it to stump up funds for customer service rather than invest in some other part of the business? CEOs that have risen from an accounting or production background, for example, may have their own priorities and they may not be customer service.

Although we would like the champion of customer service in the company to be the CEO, we know that may not be the case. Whoever carries the banner for customer service must therefore do their utmost to persuade the CEO of its importance. Facts and evidence will help. The CEO is more likely to be a convert to customer service if it can be shown that improved customer loyalty and high levels of customer satisfaction generate profits. This means the customer service team must constantly be analyzing data to show that loyal customers spend more, are more profitable, lower customer acquisition costs and that they recommend the company to others.

Step 2: Involve everyone in the company

In a consumer company, the importance of excellent customer experience is obvious to everyone who works there. B2B companies think they are different. They have a smaller number of customers, some of whom have done business with the company for years. This leads to complacency. In B2B companies most employees have limited engagement with customers. The sales teams and the service desk are the front line and in touch with customers, but to what extent does the accounts department or the production team sympathize with customer needs?

It is common for a customer to be put on hold because they have exceeded their credit limit. Or have to wait a significant length of time for their order to be processed because the production department has a schedule that cannot be changed. In a company that has a customer service culture, everyone needs to recognize that they have a role and responsibility for delivering exceptional customer experience. This means recruiting people, whatever their role within the company, who have emotional intelligence and for whom customer service is second nature. It means training them and instilling the importance of customer service and it means giving everyone the responsibility to provide service that they think is appropriate.

Step 3: Build legends

The American retailer Nordstrom has a great reputation for customer service. Its founders emphasized the importance of great customer experience and recruited and trained their staff to deliver it. Over time, examples occurred of amazing customer service that have become the stuff of legends. These legends support the culture.

Stories of excellent customer experience live on within a company and motivate everyone who works there. They become their North star. They give the team confidence to provide exceptional service and not be criticized for the cost. And what is the cost? Compared to the value of the legend it is nothing.

Step 4: Make someone responsible

We have argued that the most important ambassador of customer experience in a B2B company is the CEO. Additional support will be needed to keep the culture alive. B2B companies are waking up to the need for a dedicated customer experience specialist. There is good reason for this. Customer experience managers are the go-to person if a customer has a problem. They work with the head of sales, the head of customer service and the market research staff, coordinating and making sure that everything is aligned. This is not a junior management position. The customer experience manager must have the ear of the CEO, they must be able to rove the company, forcing improvements that improve customer experience and therefore improve customer loyalty.

Step 5: Track and measure

All B2B companies measure sales, costs, profit and a host of other variables that determine the health of their business. Customer experience is no different. A strong CX culture needs measurements.

B2B companies face an extra complication. The decision-making unit that deals with a B2B supplier involves numerous people whose views may be relevant. Someone orders the products, someone pays for them, someone uses them and quite possibly a different person specifies what is required. Furthermore, a lot depends on the products/services that are being sold, the number of customers the business serves and the way those customers are dealt with - directly or through channels. There are lots of things to consider in B2B customer experience measurement, such as:

1. Listening is key. This may seem obvious, but it is critical. Listening must be through the sales team, the service team, through online comments and reviews and in surveys. Listening must be a continuous habit using every means to obtain a good cross-section of views across the whole company.
2. Satisfaction scores are necessary. It can be a bind for customers to distil their experience into a numerical score but in so doing, they provide valuable benchmarks. Distinct aspects of performance can be measured to see what needs attention.
3. Understand the how and why. Measurements are important for tracking trends, but they do not say what to do. A deeper understanding comes from open-ended questions that explore why people gave certain answers. Ethnography helps here. Watching how customers use products and deal with a company gives insights beyond standard questioning.
4. Segment customers. Who answered the questions? What is their responsibility in the decision-making process? How big is the customer? Where are they based? What is the nature of their business? How long have they been a customer? These classification questions will show if distinct groups of people have different views. Customers are not all the same and it may be that customer experience varies between separate groups.
5. Turn findings into action. It cannot be assumed that good surveys with clear findings will lead to action. Customer experience improvements may need additional resources, change management and innovative approaches, all of which will be more likely to happen if endorsed and overseen by the boss. This takes us back to the start of this discussion - leaders of the company must be fully engaged.

It’s critical for B2B companies to move the emphasis from simply offering great products and services to ensuring that customers also have a great customer experience. Customer service is not something that is just ‘nice to have’, it is an essential part of the offer and it can only be achieved with the support of the leaders of a company. Data will be required to convince the board that customer service is a worthwhile investment. And this emphasis is vital and it needs feeding. It needs legends that remind employees that everyone can contribute. It needs a customer experience manager who draws everything together and beats the CX drum every day. And it needs feedback that shows that the culture is working and which gaps need plugging.