How To Stop B2B Account Churn: A four-part series
SMB account churn is one of the biggest problems facing B2B companies. Strategies to lock customers in with long-term contracts and subscriptions or build in heavy discounts or rebates do not build loyalty or engagement and are easily mitigated or matched by competition. In this series, we will discuss four proven methods for reducing SMB account churn while increasing loyalty and engagement uniquely to your company. In part 1, we will cover SMB account expectations and how to solve for the inevitable gap.
What customers want versus what your company delivers
A recent survey by Deloitte Digital found SMB buyers on average 34% more likely to buy and 32% more likely to renew a contract with B2B leading suppliers that master customer experience. (Deloitte Digital, Market Research report, Jan 2021). The survey also found that most important attributes of good customer experience by both SMB buyers and sellers are trustworthiness and reliability.
This is where the expectations gap begins. During the purchase cycle, salespeople have to make representations and promises about numerous things relating to reliability, delivery, returns, invoicing, payment, service and more. Buyers use these representations and promises to form expectations and make critical business decisions as a result.
Unfortunately, the promises and representations made by the B2B seller and the resulting expectations by the buyer are rarely in sync. And when B2B sellers breach trust by failing to deliver on a buyer expectation, or products and services fail to perform as promised, it can severely disrupt a buyer’s business including their bottom line. Buyers who are in a relationship with an unreliable or untrustworthy vendor begin exploring other options and the relationship can quickly become unsalvageable.
Four keys to closing the expectations gap
Decide what promises and commitments about your products and/or services you can stand behind 100% of the time. Then, systematize trust in ways that help you deliver on those promises and commitments every time. This means deploying people and technology where it will matter the most to keeping trust and reliability for these promises. Make these trust and reliability hallmarks a part of your brand promise. Also, critical in this step is to understand what things you cannot promise. Ensure sales and customer facing teams are well versed and clear about what they can represent as a promise and what they cannot.
Restructure post-sale resources to prioritize empathy and feedback. Unfortunately, many B2B companies send out their “A” team to find and contract new business, and then deploy their “C” team to onboard and execute on buyer expectations. A better approach is to make sure your onboarding and early business execution teams are staffed with “A” performers that are experts in listening and understanding buyers needs and feedback and have the ability to quickly triage and mitigate issues. Most often, the enemy of great onboarding is time. Early in the sales cycle, it is important that sales communicate the realistic resources and timing needed for successful onboarding and execution.
Calibrate the marketing and sales customer roadmap. Many B2B organizations hand off engagement communications (including up-selling / cross-selling) to Marketing as soon as an account has been onboarded. If marketing and sales are not in sync with customer needs, preferences, objectives and timing, this hand off can create large gaps in expectations and trust. Strategic roadmaps and objectives by customer vertical, channel, or even individual account should be agreed upon at least annually and executed quarterly by marketing and sales teams that coordinate frequently.
Enable customer experience teams to personalize communications and customize solutions. All too often, B2B accounts leave simply because they feel no one is listening or no one cares. With the broad availability and relatively low cost of modern digital communication technology, it is tragic how many B2B vendors still rely on old voice-centric customer service systems including frustrating IVR trees.
Successful customer experience teams synthesize and prioritize communications from multiple sources (reviews, emails, voicemails, text messages, phone calls, etc.) in order to work efficiently and holistically to address customer needs. As an example, a 2-way text thread can be incredibly powerful in quickly mitigating a potential disaster, but a similar mistake will likely happen again if the communication isn’t made within a system that captures the exchange and enables customer experience team members to learn from the interaction.
Next...
How to stop B2B account churn - Part 2: Who has the relationship?
How to stop B2B Account Churn - Part 1: Solving the Expectations Gap
Successful B2B vendors need to find robust ways to better align expectations with buyers and structure their resources to address and mitigate any breaches of reliability or trust. Listed below are four strategies that will help close the expectations gap with buyers and have the potential to provide unique loyalty to your company and brand.
