A recent Gallup study reports that on average only 29% of your B2B customers are engaged with their suppliers, with the remaining 71% either indifferent or actively disengaged. That means there could be hundreds of millions of dollars of lost growth within your B2B customer base.  

To compound the issue, the lack of customer-centricity seems to be widespread.   A recent Accenture B2B study revealed that over 75% of companies fall short in developing and delivering a positive customer experience. The survey determined that B2B companies commonly fell into three categories:  

Leaders, which represented 23% of the survey sample, both agree that the customer experience is highly important to their strategic priorities and have experienced significant revenue growth in the past year. Leaders generally excel in both customer experience strategy and execution capabilities. 

Strivers accounted for 57% of the sample across the three categories. Strivers were failing to collect the results from their customer experience investment that Leaders enjoy because they are falling short in some way either both strategically and operationally or on just one of these two dimensions. Strivers experience a revenue growth rate that’s half of Leaders’. 

Laggards, which made-up 20% percent of the sample, also stated the customer experience is important to their strategic priorities but perform poorly on both customer experience strategy and execution. They have experienced limited to negative growth in the past year.  

So why don’t more companies invest in the research and improve internal business processes to better understand and improve the customer experience?   

• The ROI on investments in these areas is difficult to quantify. 
• Traditionally, many companies try to differentiate on product and price….not customer experience. 
• Companies often rely on sales people to provide customer insight. However the information provided by the sales function is often filtered and biased. 
• Revenue growth is often achieved through acquisitions, so the lack of organic growth is usually masked. 
• Lack of strong “C-Suite” commitment.  

The message is clear. To achieve long-term profitable growth, improving the customer experience has to be a priority, both strategically and operationally.  And it has to happen NOW. 

Priority Metrics Group has been delivering game changing B2B customer insight to our clients for 25 years.  PMG’s Customer Insight™ is designed as a robust, customer-centric management tool which collects both quantitative data and relevant qualitative data to support growth strategies. The final deliverable is a fact-based, data-driven report providing guidance on how to better align with your customers to strategically grow revenue, profitability and customer share.