By Whitney Satin

My last post looked at why the customer experience is the best opportunity for marketers to build greater loyalty with their customers.  But how do we figure out what actually matters in the experience as far as getting customers to actually prefer us?

To answer this, we surveyed over 9,000 customers from 15 member companies representing a range of B2B industries.  We asked customers to rate different aspects of the experience across three categories:

• Touchpoints—the specific interactions between a customer and the company (e.g., customer service, technical support, online experience).
• Common Benefits—the qualities every company hopes to deliver across the customer experience (e.g., is easy to do business with, trustworthy).
• Unique Benefits—qualities specific to each company, or, the sources of value that set one experience apart from another (e.g., simplifies my supply chain, provides great ‘out-out-of-the-box’ experience).

Using regression analysis, we looked at how each category contributes to customer preference and repurchase intentions.  The results were surprising.  The perceptions customers have of touchpoint performance have virtually no impact on preference. Read More »

Last week, I wrote about marketers putting social experience at the center of their integrated communications.  I referred to Best Buy and Twelpforce.  Just this weekend, I caught a flurry of Honda TV spots promoting a particular Honda Facebook experience.

One of the open questions for marketers: How should one go about identifying the right social experience?

Answer: Identify an imprinting experience that best highlights your brand’s differentiating attributes or benefits. Read More »

Intriguingly, Best Buy is putting Twelpforce at the center of its big communications initiative for the holiday season.  Looking at data from the 125 companies that have taken the Council’s social media maturity diagnostic, we know that only 11% of marketers have built social media into their integrated communications planning processes.  That got me to thinking…

Most B2C marketers take the “tonnage” approach to touchpoint planning.  They work back from growth goals and volume targets to plan their touchpoint mix—their mix models tell them how much money they need to dump into broadcast, out-of-home, print, promotions and the like, to hit those volume targets.  Social and experiential touchpoints play second fiddle, at best.  Read More »

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.

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