CX & Customer Success resources

Statement

Rationale

B2B SaaS Companies need profitable growth.

Profitable growth increases shareholder value (critical even for private companies!).

Loyal customers buy more and advocate on your behalf.

• Loyal customers bring in more revenue while reducing cost of sales

• Therefore, loyal customers accelerate the rate of profitable growth.

• “Disloyal” customers buy less and tell friends and colleagues to stay away.

Accelerating profitable growth comes by growing the
ratio of loyal customers : not-loyal customers.

So how to improve this ratio?

Loyalty grows by strengthening relationships.

• Loyalty is defined as a strong feeling of support or allegiance.

• B2B customers feel loyal when your products and services are aligned to their objectives

•  Remember there is no customer, but there is a group of contacts within an account that either make / influence buying decisions or spread positive/negative word-of-mouth.  Are you hearing from the right people?

Relationships are strengthened by demonstrating that you are listening.

• The more you can demonstrate listening, the easier it is for a customer-contact to feel supported and be loyal.

• Demonstrated listening = Asking + Acting

• The less you demonstrate listening, the harder it is for a customer-contact to feel heard and supported.

Demonstrated listening comes from addressing what
“customers” are telling “you” (your company)

• Even though the “front line” CSMs / Account Teams hear from specific people in the account, the rest of the company doesn’t hear the feedback and therefore can’t address it. Just as there are multiple contacts in the account in different roles that have differing wants and needs, so too there are multiple roles within your company (“you”) that need to hear and act on the voice-of-the-customer.

• CSMs / Account Teams don’t always interact with all the people (roles/persona such as decision makers/execs/leaders, key influencers, project managers, IT personnel, end users, etc) that others in the company need to hear.  All of those people have “sentiment” that results from working with your company, and whether directly involved in purchase decisions or not they all have a word-of-mouth impact in the marketplace.  Be careful that you know which contacts and roles from which you are hearing.

• Although your company can’t necessarily do everything that customers want, you can address concerns with work-arounds, best practices, or managing expectations.

Therefore, setting up opportunities to hear your customers and address their feedback strengthens relationships and drives loyalty

When done right, Voice-of-customer (VoC) programs are an ideal way to enable everyone in the company to hear what’s working and what’s not working.

Waypoint Group provides a complementary Program Evaluation session — no selling! — for B2B companies that are looking to get more from their VoC efforts.

Q.E.D.

Either through consultative best practices, tools, and templates, or through
TopBox, your Customer Engagement Operating System,
Waypoint Group helps B2B companies build effective Voice-of-Customer programs that listen and act.