B2B Customer Experience Best Practices
April 2013

Greetings!

 

In last month's edition of the CX Journal, we discussed the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings of 246 U.S. organizations. Since then, I've published posts with detailed results from the 19 industries in the ratings. These provide a great window into the CX leaders and laggards in each industry.

 

We also published a couple of reports that are highlighted below in this month's journal. The first one examines customer experience best practices in business-to-business (B2B) environments. The second report is our annual study of the media habits of U.S. consumers, showing how many hours per day consumers do things such as go online, watch TV and listen to the radio.

 

One of the reasons why customer experience is on the rise is the strong ecosystem of vendors. That's why Temkin Group created the Customer Experience Vendor Excellence Awards. Congratulations to this year's winners:

  • Allegiance
  • NICE Systems
  • Walker Information
Seven additional strong vendors were named as finalists: ForeSee, Ipsos Loyalty, Mattersight, Medallia, Rapide, TeamSupport, and Waypoint Group.
 
The CXPA.org update includes information about the 2013 CX Innovation Awards (nominations are due by April 12th).
 
We continue to have an exciting research agenda, which I discuss in my Temkin Group update. Let us know if your organization would benefit from a research subscription.
B2B Customer Experience Best Practices

 

We examined the effectiveness of large companies across Temkin Group's four customer experience core competencies. Only 37% of B2Bs received a "good" rating in Purposeful Leadership, and that's the highest scoring competency. So there's a lot of work to do. 

We interviewed dozens of firms to see what it takes for B2Bs to succeed. Our report Best Practices in B2B Customer Experience identifies many best practices across two areas:
  1. Building a client-oriented mindset. Organizations have a natural tendency to operate from an internal perspective, focusing on the needs of their functional silos more than on their clients. To offset this tendency, B2B firms need to build repeatable and systematic processes for gathering, analyzing, and taking action on customer insights.
  2. Building client-centric relationship management. Today, account management functions tend to be oriented around sales generation and firefighting. To build stronger, longer-term ties with clients, Temkin Group expects that B2B firms will head towards a more client-centric model of account management that uses client insights throughout the relationship management continuum.
The report provides specific practices in these areas from companies including CDW, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Enterasys, Genworth Financial, Lithium, Philadelphia Insurance Companies, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Stream Global, Verint, and VMware.

Media Use Benchmark, 2013
 
We surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about their media use patterns and compared the results to data that we collected in 2012. This year's Media Use Benchmark report examines internet usage (at home and at work), reading of books and news (online and offline), TV watching, radio listening, and mobile activity. The data snapshot breaks down the data by age, ethnicity, income, educational level, and geographic region.
  Here are some factoids from the research:
  • Ninety-eight percent of consumers go online at home, and 60% do it at least three hours per day
  • Sixty-five to 74-year-olds watch the most TV (4.2 hours per day), and 18- to 24-year-olds watch the least (3.6 hours per day)
  • Thirty-nine percent of consumers making less than $25,000 per year use their mobile phone for going online or using an app, compared with more than 60% of those who earn $75,000 or more
  • Asians spend twice as much time reading e-books as do Caucasians
  • Fifty-four percent of consumers in the South use their mobile phone for going online or use an app, compared with 49% of those in the Midwest
Customer Experience Matters Blog
Temkin Group Research Plans and Update 

We're preparing the next set of Temkin Ratings with the 2013 Temkin Loyalty Ratings, followed by the Trust and Forgiveness Ratings. We are also working on our annual report identifying the state of CX management as well as other research examining the rise of customer analytics and employee engagement case studies. Here's link to our current list of research.
 
Please see information below about our corporate research subscriptions.
 
If you're looking to accelerate your CX efforts, here are a number of ways that Temkin Group can help:
  • Interactive training workshops for executive teams or other groups to gain alignment around key customer experience principles and priorities or to develop plans in areas such as voice of the customer programs.
  • Assessments of customer experience efforts to identify gaps and opportunities to accelerate your transformation efforts
  • Speeches and webinars on a wide range of customer experience and leadership topics
  • Educational curricula to establish and reinforce an understanding of proven customer experience principles across an organization
  • Strategy reviews of marketing and product plans for vendors who want to help companies transform their customer experience
Corporate Subscriptions to Temkin Group Research

Temkin Group research and advisory services can be a great resource for your CX efforts. The insights will help you implement best practices, benchmark your performance, identify mistakes to avoid and provide you with guidance along the way. Our corporate subscriptions include: 
  • Unlimited access to all Temkin Group research and Temkin Ratings data for all of your employees for 12 months (for internal use only)
  • Up to 10 inquiries (questions that Temkin group can answer in a short email or during a phone conversation of up to 20 minutes)
  • One advisory call (phone discussion up to 90 minutes)
Please send us an email if you are interested in pricing or in receiving more details about our research subscriptions.
CXPA Update 

 

Are you proud of your CX work? Then get recognized! The Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org) is holding its second annual CX Innovation Awards. Applications are due by April 12th. 

If you're not yet a member of the CXPA, then you're missing out on an amazing resource for things such as:

The CXPA is a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to the success of customer experience professionals. Join us!

If you're interested in Temkin Group's research or services, then drop me a line at [email protected], visit our website at www.temkingroup.com, or give us a call at (617) 916-2075.
Sincerely, 

 

Bruce Temkin
Customer Experience Transformist
& Managing Partner
Temkin Group

Chair, Customer Experience Professionals Association

Customer Experience Professionals Association

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In This Issue
> B2B CX Best Practices
> Media Use Benchmark
> CX Matters Blog
> Temkin Group Update
> CXPA Update
Temkin Group
We are a research and consulting firm that combines thought leadership with a deep understanding of the dynamics of large organizations to accelerate their customer experience transformational efforts
Four Customer Experience Competencies

To improve CX in a sustainable way, you need to master all four of these competencies
 
Purposeful
Leadership
 
Employee 
Engagement
 
Compelling
Brand Values
 
Customer
Connectedness
CX Tidbits
 
> Of the 203 companies that are included in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings, 57% firms had at least a modest increase. 
 
> Seventy-seven percent of large orgs plan to spend more on customer experience in 2013  than they did in 2012

> Engaged employees are almost 3X as likely to make improvement recommendations

> B2C firms are much better than B2B at compelling brand values

>Compared with detractors, promoters are more than 3x as likely to recommend insurers and health plans, and 4x as likely to recommend banks

> Consumers who are satisfied with customer service interactions are more than 4x as likely to repurchase
Quick Links

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CX Professionals Association 

10 Common CX Mistakes

 

From eBook: 10 CX Mistakes to Avoid
 
1) Faking Executive Commitment 
2) Over-Relying on Customer Surveys 
3) Neglecting Experience Design 
4) Treating All Customers the Same 
5) Un-Engaging New Customers 
6) Ignoring Employees 
7) Obsessing About Detractors 
8) Forgetting to Celebrate Success 
9) Falling in Love with a Metric 
10) Mapping Internal Touchpoints
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