Why Acting on Customer Feedback Is the Key to B2B Success
The most successful B2B companies sincerely care about their customer relationships and truly listen to the voice of the customer.
They allocate budget to survey their customers once or twice a year, or even after every major business transaction. They bring in the data, analyse it, and then act upon it. It’s a continuous, informed evolution.
But only 30% of businesses behave this way. According to Forrester, the other 70% may bring in the customer satisfaction data, but they fail to act on it. Why is that?
In our experience at Verity, for a great majority of those 70% the reason the survey data isn’t actioned is because there is a lack of accountability and senior leadership support. It’s hard to take the time to review and act on customer feedback when daily operational challenges get priority. Where to even start when supply chain issues seem more urgent?
Caring about customer relationships requires cultural commitment. Senior leadership must not only require customer surveys to be executed, but also require that the entire leadership team as well as the account teams review the feedback, internalise it, prepare action plans, and track progress. A growth mindset in the organisation is necessary to truly (and honestly) look at how to do things differently.
Only when others in the organisation witness the leadership team’s commitment to act will the voice of the customer become an important KPI. And only when it’s an important KPI will action be mandated with positive shifts expected in the next round of the survey.
Prove to customers you take their opinions seriously
According to research, 43% of companies do not answer customer satisfaction surveys because they think the surveying companies don’t really care. So, a critical part of any company’s action plans following a customer survey is to clearly communicate what was heard and the planned actions back to the customers.
Communicate to all customers regardless of whether their responses were negative or positive. Even to those who didn’t respond at all, as seeing how you’re actioning the data may inspire them to respond next time. Your report can include the things you’re working on as well as the things you understand you’re doing well.
The important thing is to close the loop with your customers, so they know you take their opinions seriously. It’s in your interest to do so.
It pays to listen to your customers
Successful B2B businesses welcome the criticism of their customers because it is more profitable to do so. If you know where you fall short compared to your competitors, you can actively fix those problems and fend off competitive threats. If you understand where your customers’ future needs lie, you can adapt and actively grow your business.
You may not always be able to fix the problem in the short term (e.g., supply constraints or price inflation), but specialising in customer feedback as we do at Verity, we see that how you deal with the issue is often more important than the issue itself. In fact, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you show you are listening and that you care, customers will feel better about the relationship. We often see this borne out for ourselves, with higher ratings in the next survey that we conduct.
In general, our clients who achieve the highest average ratings are well practiced in internalising the survey data, developing action plans, and then communicating those plans to their customers. And our most successful clients, who achieve high ratings and are disciplined about following up on their customer feedback, also have higher revenue growth rates than those who don’t.
It’s proof that – quite simply – healthy customer relationships are good business
Article first published on B&T.
