[eBook] Essential Questions Every B2B Chief Customer Officer Needs

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Essential Questions Every

B2B Chief Customer Officer Needs to Ask

When it comes to understanding B2B customer loyalty and strengthening relationships, there’s one thing Chief Customer Officer’s (CCO’s) need: Voice-‐of-‐Customer (VoC) data. !No big deal, right? Your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Account Managers (AM’s) know exactly what’s going on with each account. Wrong.

!Business-‐to-‐business companies have such complex inner workings, it’s not enough to mimic typical consumer market research methods to achieve customer success (CS).

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If Customer Success is the goal

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Surveys can be the vehicle to get you started navigating and improving the customer journey

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So if you’re going to run surveys…

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...you need the right tools to ask the right questions and

take the right prescriptive actions.

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Before you ask customers any questions,

CCO’s need to ask VoC vendors how they

gather all the necessary insights.

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!

of Essential Questions Every CCO

Needs to Ask In 2015

!(and why)

Here is

THE

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!The metric you need:

Track the percentage of accounts that did NOT respond

✓ Research shows that silent accounts are up to 7x likelier to churn faster than even the angriest of customers – they don’t even care enough to tell you how mad they are! And they’re clearly not waiting around for you to fix the problem. !

✓ Most companies focus on getting high response rates but they fail to hone in on the fact that if 50% of people respond, that’s still HALF of your customers who are disengaged! Is your team focused on silent accounts? !

✓ Increase the representativeness of your answers with real-‐time data during feedback collection and get in contact with important accounts who are not engaged.

1) How can we use customer feedback to reduce churn?

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http://bit.ly/nonRespondersblog

The reporting you need: Create benchmarks within your company by comparing and contrasting similar-‐accounts*

!✓ Expensive B2B benchmark reports from third-‐party companies won’t give you an accurate

comparison– no other business is exactly like yours! !

✓ Easily use your own historical VoC data to get a clear outlook on not only overall performance but also within segments like product tiers, geographical regions, or industries. !

✓ By running a customer success program with the proper metrics and data collection, your company will be able to juxtapose one account’s data with similar accounts for apples-‐to-‐apples contrast.

2) How can we compare satisfaction scores to understand whether they are “good” or not?

*see page 20 for an example10

The metrics you need: The percentage of total accounts that responded and the breakdown of who

specifically responded within the account !

✓ To avoid response and selection bias, your survey invitations should cover a pre-‐determined: !

✓ Minimum requirement for overall responses (i.e., coverage is not complete until 3 people respond for each account)

✓ Minimum requirement of responses from different roles within the account (i.e., Decision Makers, End Users, Influencers, and any other user type that makes sense for your business) !

✓ Set these guidelines from the beginning to ensure representative data and cast away margin-‐of-‐error doubts. !

✓ Use this framework to also track whether you’re questionnaires are completed by important segments like strategic accounts.

3) How does Management know if VoC data provides an accurate snapshot of Customer Success?

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The program design you need: Use role-‐based questionnaires and

only show relevant questions to each respondent !✓ VoC software that specializes in B2B should easily allow respondents to select a

role (like Decision Maker, Influencer, or Day-‐to-‐Day Contact), showing or hiding questions based on previous answers. !

✓ Increase meaningful answers and response rates with questions that resonate with customers. !

✓ B2B companies have such complex organizational structures with buying syndicates, this role-‐based reporting is critical to understanding the dynamics of an account and how they change over time.

4) How can we ensure each question is applicable to each respondent?

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!The reporting you need:

Stack-‐rank the key relationship drivers for each account, segment, and portfolio.*

!✓ Your survey tool should list out which parts of the customer journey and experience would have the greatest impact on the relationship based on the correlation to the customer’s Likelihood to Recommend. !

✓ Prioritize your actions to improve customer experience with the most impactful steps– ideal for teams with limited resources.

5) How can we know which issues are most important to our customers?



Automated documentation for follow-‐up including progress and action-‐plans with email notifications* !

✓ Effective governance for follow-‐up is often the lost ingredient when it comes to digging to the root cause of an issue. Detailed reports for account managers and customers are the key to holding staff organized and accountable in resolving action items. !

✓ Your CRM-‐integrated system should send the appropriate CSM an automated alert when there is a Need for Contact or a “severe Detractor” (customers who responded with a 0-‐3 in their Likelihood to Recommend, for example) response that comes through in real-‐time. Close the loop with a phone-‐call within 24 -‐ 48 hours to provide a “wow” moment and get back on the right track. !

✓ Management should also receive notifications with stats on which CSM’s have followed up and which customers still need more of a high-‐touch approach.

6) How do our CSM’s effectively close the loop with customers?


The reporting you need: Key Driver Analysis illustrating the importance of an issue to customers and closed loop reporting noting revenue loss/ROI

earned from resolution* !

✓ Depending on the severity of the scores or how many contacts within an account are reporting the same pain points, the right B2B survey tool can help companies understand whether a red flag for an account is high priority or not through Key Driver Analysis. !

✓ Companies with the proper follow-‐up reporting can also note how the issue resolution has impacted the relationship; whether revenue was earned or saved as a result to calculate the ROI.

7) How can we evaluate the impact of an issue on the customer relationship?




The reporting you need: Monitor changes in response rates and scores for individual

customers, accounts and segments – not just overall* !

✓ Lots of companies look at changes in scores and overall response rates, but there’s so much more to the big picture: VoC systems need to show changes for individual customers and accounts that stop or start giving feedback – it is likely an indicator for relationship health. !

✓ For example, if an account previously told your team they were unhappy and did not bother responding at all this time around, they don’t think it’s worth their time—their feedback wasn’t used previously, the problem still exists, or they are about to leave anyway.

8) What kind of trend analysis should we be doing?



Use word clouds, tone analysis and frequency of keywords to easily view hot button items

!✓ VoC systems should be able to filter open-‐ended comments to decipher

positive, neutral, and negative tones and identify trends in keywords based on frequency.

!✓ CSMs should also be able to perform easy account and segment analysis by

filtering comments with keywords, Recommend scores, and product usage to understand how issues are related to use cases.

9) How can we decipher open-ended comments quickly?

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!The program design you need:

Map out all the instances your company will collect feedback throughout the year to strategically collect enough data without

inundating customers !

✓ Combining relationship feedback questions with information that will matter to different parts of the business (like Sales or Product, not just Customer Support) will help alleviate the need for exorbitant surveys throughout the year. !

✓ Developing a sophisticated schedule for covering 100% of customers throughout the year will ensure proper data is collected without an overwhelming number of requests that become ignored over time.

10) How can we ensure we’re not inundating customers with feedback requests?

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11): What kind of B2B software is out there for CS teams to efficiently manage

the feedback process? !

The software you need: !!!!!!

✓ All of these essentials questions can be answered by TopBox: a B2B voice-‐of-‐customer software designed by Customer Success consultants.

!✓ Affordable for small-‐to-‐medium enterprises, TopBox delivers unique reporting for detailed account, segment and portfolio analysis that garners 9X ROI. !

✓ TopBox is also a “managed service” alleviating the busywork for CS teams and allowing them more time with customers and resolving issues.

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Get clear visuals on how certain accounts rate your business compared to other similar accounts.

Benchmarks

(jump back to the questions)20

Drill even deeper: !Know exactly who to follow-‐up with to understand why scores have changed

Trend Lines Overall Scores & Response Rate Individual Score Changes


Closed Loop Tracking

● Status of Action Items, maintained by CSM’s

Symptom(s): • What did the customer experience? • “Client stated…”

Overall action plan that was agreed with the client

Appended Status history


Relationship Impact

How will the process be fixed so it doesn’t happen again?

After resolution, what was the “real” cause of this issue in the first place?

What, if any, benefits were gained by resolving this issue?

Free-text description, with categorization fields to be able to report on root causes

● Learn from mistakes, don’t repeat them


Get Organized for Action !Prioritize action items easily.

Stack Rank Key DriversUnderstand the relationship between the Overall Likelihood to Recommend

with each relationship element and touchpoint.


Schedule a Demo, Start Improving

Have you been running customer surveys but not gaining new insight? Grow your business with strong relationships that activate advocates and convert at-risk accounts with vital reports and detailed action plans. !TopBox is the affordable, turnkey solution for B2B firms looking to understand customer sentiment and loyalty. !Contact us to turbo-charge your Net Promoter or Customer Success program with TopBox in as little as 30 days.

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[email protected] 408-673-2211

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