The world of customer experience was built for B2C.
In B2C, it makes sense to do a sample-based survey of a few thousand customers and segment the results in a way that represents the whole market.
This works for them because:
- Customer profiles are very similar
- Their financial contribution to the business typically falls in a narrow range
- Purchasing activity varies only slightly
Therefore, it works pretty well to segment customer feedback on things like demographics and use it to extrapolate.
This is not the case in B2B.
In B2B, there’s already a natural segmentation that takes place: by annual revenue contribution.
A C-Suite leader at a company we talked to the other day gave us a great example of this.
He discussed how a negligibly small customer for them brings in $15m annually, an average customer $100m, while their largest customers are in the ballpark of $1bn in annual revenue.
While these numbers may seem mind-blowingly large to some of us, for a multinational corporate business this is not atypical.
This scenario illustrates an important point for all of us. Every customer is valuable, but not every customer holds the same value.
In fact, in B2B, some customers are 100x more valuable than others.
A sample-based survey doesn’t make sense in this environment. One happy customer from a smaller deal size doesn’t represent the wants and needs of another larger, more complex deal.
This is why we encourage B2B organizations to focus less on the Net Promoter Score itself, and more on metrics that truly matter: like revenue coverage.
When it comes to your B2B experience program, instead of ‘what % of our customers are currently collecting regular feedback from?’ you must ask yourself ‘what % of our revenue are we currently collecting regular feedback from?’
We recommend to our customers that you aim to collect customer feedback from 80% of your revenue-base each quarter.
Armed with the knowledge that 80% of your revenue base is either a detractor, passive or promoter, your frontline sales and success teams are able to improve relationships and tackle churn-risks for the majority of business. They're able to build a healthy revenue base.
The widget below in the CustomerGauge dashboard visualizes this perfectly. Users of the dashboard have knowledge of how much revenue is at-risk, how much is passive, how much is safe, and, importantly, how much is unaccounted for.
