Ensuring that a customer has a positive experience through their journey is critical to the growth of B2B companies. A successful customer journey will likely result in promoters that will buy more from your company and recommend you to prospects. Mishaps in the customer journey — in deployment, training, account management or support — will create barriers for purchasing more from you. If severe enough, they may lead to defections.
Many Recent Customer Journey Efforts Have Been Resource Consuming with Low ROI
Customer Journey Mapping efforts to date have involved resource intensive efforts of creating detailed process maps. The intent has been to improve the customer experience throughout the journey by streamlining processes, reducing handoffs and increasing time to value. These efforts have taken a ‘boil the ocean’ approach of addressing every single pain point in the process. For those who have been around in the 90’s, this feels very similar to Process Re-Engineering efforts.
While many of these efforts have indeed resulted in more streamlined processes, they may not have moved the needle on the business metrics that count; increasing the population of Promoters, increasing upsell and cross sell opportunities and improving client retention.
StrategicCX Business Objectives
Why is that? Mainly, because the approach is uniform; reducing inefficiencies at every step of the process, rather than honing in on process steps that actually matter to the customer.
Topline’s Approach: Focus on Activities That Move the Needle. ‘Moments of Truth’
At Topline Strategy, we shy away from the generic mapping approach. We leverage our experience in B2B technology consulting to quickly focus on the problems that matter most to customers, the Moments of Truth. Moments of Truth are process steps or touchpoints that can make or break a relationship. They can occur at any point in the customer journey and are unique to the company’s products and businesses.
Case Study: One example of a Moment of Truth we discovered was with a client who sells enterprise security and compliance solutions. Customer interviews revealed that the gap between successful and unsuccessful implementations was frequently attributable to the presence of a trained internal resource who could help move the implementation forward. Ensuring this resource is available for the project was a clear Moment of Truth for the customer. Fixing this one problem created a meaningful difference in customer satisfaction and therefore retention, upsell and overall spend. Fixing every step of the process would have resulted in a lengthy and costly process with less discernible differences to the bottom line.
Topline’s Methodology: A Customized, Primary Research Approach for Each Client
Finally, at Topline Strategy we recognize that every company is different and its customers face different challenges. What may be a Moment of Truth for one company is not likely to make a difference for another company. Therefore, our approach at Topline is to conduct primary customer research for every client. Rather than relying on our existing knowledge and on the client’s internal resources, we focus externally. We conduct extensive primary customer research to reach our conclusions. We have a team of highly trained consultants versed in B2B technology who will spend time with our clients’ customers and understand their needs. This approach enables us to deliver tailored Customer Journey recommendations that impact the top line for our clients.
If you would like to learn more about our Buyer Journeys programs simply contact us.