- Only 17% of B2B companies have fully integrated customer data throughout their organisation
- Only 23% of B2B marketers claim to have a customer-centric versus a channel- or product-centric organisational structure
- B2B customer experience index ratings rank far lower than their B2C counterparts. The average B2B company scores below 50% compared to the typical score of 65 to 85% for B2C companies
- B2B companies that have transformed their customer experience processes saw revenue growth of 10 to 15%, received higher client satisfaction scores, improved employee satisfaction scores, and reduced operational costs by 10 to 15%
Customer journey maps are key for B2B companies
B2B companies should map their customer journey maps. These are visual representations of every experience customers have with a brand. Customer journey maps will help your company deeply understand your customers’ experiences and background. After looking into your customer acquisition and retention processes, this exercise will help you understand the many points of contact between your brand and your customers. These points of contact include offline and online funnels like social media channels, paid ads, organic searches, websites, emails, newsletters, word of mouth, and media publications.
Customer journey maps are a powerful tool to better understand your customers’ experiences
Many B2B companies comprehend the significance of using customer journey maps as an important tool to structure their internal organisation and processes. However, when it comes to marketing, companies rarely use maps, and it is even less common in the field of B2B marketing. Customer maps are a powerful and untapped technique to understanding every experience your customer has with your brand. These maps can help brands boost customer acquisition and retention, resulting in better business performance and growth.
Build maps based on data
A robust customer journey map should be built using rigorously collected data. These maps should not be based on a fictive idea of what brands think their customer touchpoints are, or the ideal touchpoints. They should be based on data showing the traffic for each point of interaction. The best ways to gather this data is to centralise all the information in an up-to-date CRM system. Without this, companies will have to gather data from disparate data silos, which is an inefficient process.
While the end goal is to map the entire journey, depending on the company’s marketing objectives, focusing on a specific phase of the customer journey will help companies collect the right data to gradually build up the customer map.
In general, customer journeys fall into four phases:
- Attracting: The channels that your prospects find your business and the way that they start engaging with you
- Converting: The first purchase or positive interaction with your brand
- Service: How your brand fulfils the customer’s first order and how you onboard them
- Loyalty: Your strategy for maintaining customer relationships
The data collected should accurately tell you about the number of different touchpoints a customer has with your brand during each phase.
Optimizing your customer journey
The aim of these maps is to clearly identify the various pain points and strengths your customer journey stages.
From the data, you can uncover the moments of pain (when your customers seem to be disappointed and leave) or moments of glory (when your brands exceed the customers’ expectations).
Therefore, your map will help you identify these crucial moments and their impact they have on customer behaviour and on costs of service, loss of earnings, or profits.
Unleashing customer value
Understanding the end-to-end B2B journey is crucial for B2B customers, who now expect much more than before. Many B2B company continue to focus on the product over the brand experience. However, a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer effective in today’s volatile and rapidly changing landscape. Customer journey maps provide more personalisation and offer a proactive strategy to understand customers’ needs and preferences, helping to unlock customer value.
