Customer Feedback & NPS
B2B relationships are a lot more complicated than consumer relationships and have a much higher lifetime value. There are often multiple decision-makers and decision-influencers, making it difficult to get a clear read on the overall strength of the relationship at any given time. Fortunately, B2B customers find their relationship with suppliers to be just as important as the supplier, which is why you shouldn’t be afraid to ask what your customers think.
Here at Bollin Green, we’ve supported companies across the globe by gathering actionable customer feedback which has highlighted their client’s pains, challenges and even found new ways to improve their services. All of which has helped to enhance their customer’s relationship and lead to an increase in long-lasting customers.
The Golden Rules to Customer Feedback
1. Respect the customer
Respecting the customer is the first principle of any agile customer feedback campaign, and this is far more important when it comes to B2B relationships. The complex nature and the high value on B2B relationships makes it vital you respect each other.
Exclusion rules. It’s essential to make sure you aren’t asking the same person to take a survey over and over. It’s generally recommended that if a customer has provided feedback, they won’t be asked again for at least a month. And if the customer has asked not to be surveyed, make sure to respect their wishes.
Be on the ball. If a customer has a bad experience or needs attention, get on it as soon as possible. Making sure you have some form of customer feedback process in place is necessary. After all, if your customers can’t feedback to you, how do you know if you’re doing a good job? Communication is key; getting the customers feedback and asking how you can improve or rectify any issues will go a long way. It shows you are listening, and it will also help you to gather some useful insight to avoid these issues in the future.
Time is money. Respect your customers time. Keep the surveys short and relevant. If you need a longer survey, schedule a time for it. Try to avoid calling out of the blue and ask for more than five minutes if you need more than five minutes.
Personalise. Having a real person call shows to your customers that you are taking the relationship seriously. Sending an email communicates that you don’t want to spend the time listening to your customers – so why should they spend more of their time and money with you?
2. Consider the entire customer journey
Because B2B relationships typically have many different people involved in various aspects, you want to try and capture feedback throughout the customer journey. Asking for feedback after a customer service call or when you close a customer trouble ticket are obvious times to ask for feedback, but you should also be asking for feedback after deliveries, invoices, training sessions, new orders and any other point where a customer interacts with your business directly.
3. Have a customer-centric view
Each person is going to have a different perspective on your business relationship. It’s key that you can pull together the different surveys and establish a complete picture of your customer’s journey. Only then will you have the full context of the relationship.
What is NPS?
Are you curious to see how many of your customers would recommend you to their business connections? NPS is what you’re looking for. NPS is short for Net-Promoter Score. It’s based on a simple scale of 1 to 10 and divided into three key sections.
Detractors (score of 0-6) are customers who are unhappy with your service or product and would recommend against using it.
Passives (score of 7-8) are customers who are satisfied but not enthusiastic about your service or product. These customers are vulnerable to competitions offerings.
Promoters (score of 9-10) are loyal, enthusiastic customers who will keep buying your service/product and even go and promote it to other people – fueling business growth.
