B2B CEM 2012Stories of business customer experience management practices and successes are featured in the 3rd Annual ClearAction Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management Best Practices Study. Examples span across voice-of-the-customer, employee engagement in CEM, customer-focused culture, customer experience profitability, and more.

Business CEM stories are rare relative to consumer-focused examples, despite the fact that business customer experience can be much more challenging, with high involvement of numerous influencers of the purchase decision, high stakes purchases with lengthy sales cycles, reciprocal buyer/supplier relationships, and complex touch‐points across functional areas, managerial levels, and products, among other factors unique to B2B environments.

An enterprise customer experience manager at telecom provider Orange, Emilie Smith, said: “In B2B there’s an even bigger argument for CEM linkage to revenue and profitability because often the products and services for businesses are a lot more sophisticated and cost a lot more for the company to provide them. For one account, millions may be at stake.” The head of customer experience at freight provider Maersk Line, Rene Bomholt, said: “Businesses are made up of people, and people have emotions. Close relationships with customers matter a lot.”

Inspiring stories about the progress of business customer experience management can be found throughout the 2012 best practices study, featuring companies such as Ciena, Citrix, LexisNexis, Orange, SunTrust, Symantec, tw telecom, and others in business services, building materials, remarketing, and semiconductor industries.

As the sole global B2B CEM survey, this research provides inspiration to executives who want to maximize value, differentiation, and profit. Findings and recommendations are detailed in the report for these topics:
1) Top Motivations for B2B CEM

  • Role of CEM in Corporate Strategy and Day-to-Day Business
  • Investment Levels and Deployment Scope
  • Coordination Among Managers of B2B CEM Methods
  • Greatest Obstacles to B2B CEM Success

2) Journey to World-Class in How We …

  • Listen to Customers
  • View Customers
  • Center Our Employees on Customers
  • Center Our Business on Customers

The second annual study explored the linkages of CEM to corporate goals, strategy, culture, processes, and business results. Seven success factors were identified, including coordination among customer experience managers, presentation of survey results to all employees, action on survey results by owners of loyalty key drivers, and cross-organizational collaboration. The 2010 baseline study examined the functional owners of various customer experience programs, and the scope of organizational deployment.

Customer experience management (CEM) is an emerging discipline that is a composite of customer service, voice of the customer, co-innovation, experiential marketing, customer relationship management, customer references, internal branding, and similar efforts.

About ClearAction
ClearAction is a customer experience optimization consulting firm that guides company-wide action on a clear view of customer intelligence. Customer experience optimization goes beyond the revenue-focus of customer experience management, to grow both revenue and profit naturally through company-wide alignment with buyer priorities.

ClearAction’s depth of practitioner experience since 1989:

  • Inspires employees to take the customer perspective — know your customers’ world better than your competitors do.
  • Instills customer-focused decision-making as a habit among all employees — motivate customer experience optimization as a way of life.
  • Engages employees to resolve and prevent customers’ issues — collaborate cross-organizationally for company-wide customer experience excellence.

b2b customer experience 2013See the table of contents of the Annual ClearAction Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management Best Practices Study and buy your copy today.

See more information about the customer experience success factors that were identified through the B2B CEM study.