Benefits of B2B becoming more customer-centric

They are taking cues from the benefits B2C companies are reaping from listening to their consumers.

For example: Xiaomi has nurtured its mi fan  - short for Xiaomi fans – to provide feedback and suggestions for smartphone designs and improvements and turned this feedback into not only producing world-class phones (and ecosystem) at mid-tier pricing but also to set its sights well beyond China.

Can B2B companies do the same, is it even worth the effort? Take a look at the graphic below:

The implications of this untapped potential for higher value can be enormous, and you should adjust accordingly -- investing in learning more about your customers and adapting your business to suit. Don’t expect the necessary changes to involve only the customer service departments. Many others also will benefit from learning more about their customers’ emotional and rational needs.

We helped one of our clients realize the importance of understanding the emotional factors that went into choosing an industrial-equipment supplier. While they previously focused only on the rational needs of their different customer types, afterwards they were able to turn the actionable insights that we provided into a well balanced and meaningful experience for potential buyers, addressing emotional and rational needs across all touch points. 

These insights can be gained from generating meaningful Buyer Personas – based on customers who have similar behaviors, attitudes and motivations -- for the sales and marketing departments alike, or by creating Customer Experience Journey Maps. Since inter-department collaboration is required to create such items, these tools become talking points to reach internal alignment and a clear direction on how to improve the overall customer experience and on what resources will be required.

Not only are investments into learning more about your customers worthwhile now, they will keep paying off from a strategic standpoint: as competition intensifies from overlapping sectors, companies that invest in understanding their current and future customers will be better prepared to predict the shifts the markets will take in the short and long-term.

This is especially true in China, where the ever-shifting marketplace demands constant investments into operational capabilities – physical and digital – and a wider portfolio of products and services targeted at what the customers really want or need.

Contact us to find out how your company can benefit from becoming more customer oriented.