By Whitney Satin

B2B marketers certainly don’t have it easy in a down economy. Consider the typical levers at your disposal to drive stronger commercial performance. New business opportunities have virtually dried up in most industries, leaving little room to attract new, highly profitable customers. Cost-conscious customers are unwilling to pay for nuanced product differences, and many times they’ll ask for all sorts of customized “add-ons” at little or no extra cost. A lot of companies hoped that strong relationships between customers and sales reps would pull them through the downturn, but that just hasn’t been the case. Increased scrutiny into budgets has put relationship-driven demand in jeopardy, and the odds of a “relationship seller” being a high performer in this environment are just 7% – the lowest of all salesperson profiles.

Marketers need to find alternatives to avoid purely price-based competition. The customer experience increasingly stands out as the best opportunity to protect margins and maintain market share. By providing an experience significantly better than competitors, we hope to drive customer loyalty and, ultimately, strong intent to repurchase.

We typically see marketers try to improve their customer experience by optimizing individual touchpoints (e.g., customer service, technical support, online experience). For example, companies channel investments toward building a best-in-class Web site, or taking an additional few seconds off their call center response time. But how effective is this approach?

The evidence is telling. While nearly 80% of marketers believe they provide a superior customer experience, only 8% of customers agree. There are a couple of reasons for this. Many organizations find that trying to outpace competitors across the entire customer experience quickly escalates into a virtual “arms race”. Realistically, economic realities prevent most companies from ever actually achieving superiority across the entire experience.

So how can marketers determine what matters and what doesn’t for the customer experience? What distinguishes those companies who are winning with customer experience from the rest of the pack? Stay tuned …

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