CX and CSAT can be equally important for B2B or industrial sales. After all, you are dealing with people here too. Here’s why it all matters.
If you read my columns here, you’ll notice that I focus heavily on consumer insights and customer experience (CX) approaches. But guess what? CX and CSAT can be equally important for B2B or industrial sales.
Here’s why:
When customer satisfaction surveys are essential
If you are an industrial company that needs to comply with ISO 9001 or any other derivative of an international manufacturing standard such as TS 16949 for those supplying the automotive industry, or perhaps GMP for those supplying pharmaceuticals and healthcare, run an annual customer satisfaction. Surveying is a condition of doing business in your industry.
Any international manufacturing certification (eg ISO 9001, TS 16949or GMP) require regular customer satisfaction surveys and also require that these survey results drive improvements in the business.
And it’s not just the ISO people who require it. Companies applying for quality awards such as the Malcolm Baldrige Award they also require a robust customer satisfaction survey process that yields results that actually improve the business system.
While these awards and certification tables will tell you what to do, they don’t usually tell you how to do it. What you usually need to produce is:
A determination of how well you have performed with your customers. An understanding of what unmet needs your customers have that you can provide. Generate ideas for new products or services. Identify new opportunities.
Related article: The most important customer survey question
If you must do a customer survey anyway, do it right
WARNING: Make your goals as specific as possible. You can’t put an improvement team on task to improve something general like “overall satisfaction” if you don’t know what specific elements are behind it.
The first goal is to determine how well you are meeting customer expectations. Simply asking the question like “Rate how well (COMPANY X) has met your expectations, on a scale of 1 to 10” will get you nothing but garbage. Let’s say the results had an average score of 5.8 out of 10 in the meeting. your customer’s expectations. What changes would you put in place to increase this score? You don’t know because you haven’t done it. You asked a general question about their expectations rather than a specific one.
The way to solve this problem is by using an Importance/Satisfaction style question. Create a list of attributes that are important to your customer (such as having a real person answer the phone) and have them rate how important that is to them, and then have them rate their level of satisfaction with your company
Use a loop function and ask them what other alternatives they use, and have them rate your competitors’ performance as well. As Keiningham, et al. noted in the portfolio allocation rule, knowing where you stand relative to your competition is just as important as improving satisfaction with your own customers.
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These results are GOLDEN and will give you a chart that will show you exactly what is important to your customer and how well you and the competition are meeting those expectations. Not only THAT, but it will also attack those other goals of identifying new opportunities, finding unmet needs, and generating new product and service ideas! All this was achieved with just a series of questions.
Related article: 5 ways to optimize your surveys for a better customer experience
Industrial customers are people too
Industrial consumers are people too. They’re not robots, they talk, they email, they hang out on Facebook, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, and they use the same products and services that regular consumers do. Just because they work for an organization that sells heavy machinery or some kind of widget doesn’t mean they leave their humanity at the door.
That said, industrial buyers talk to each other and refer their peers to the companies, products and services they use. In fact, in my research, I have found that many loyal supplier relationships are formed through referrals. And if you’ve ever looked at industrial websites, you’ll notice that SEO and marketing know-how aren’t exactly what attract customers, word of mouth is.
In every customer satisfaction survey you take, include the Net Promoter Score question. “How likely are you to refer (COMPANY X) to a friend or colleague?”
Note that I have adjusted the question to read “colleague” instead of a family member. I did this because many of my customers don’t like to use “family members” for industrial products. I disagree with this approach because I think that using this term actually implies a certain level of goodwill.
You would NEVER refer something to a friend or family member that you did not believe was in their best interest. To me, it connotes a higher level of confidence. But use your judgment and the phrase that works best for your industry.
So whether it’s for your CX program, to achieve/continue certification, or to win a prestigious quality award, be deliberate with your survey methodologies and leverage customer feedback in as many ways as you can.
