Unlike B2C, where businesses can sometimes get by on selling to one-off customers, in B2B you need your clients to stick around.

To improve their customer retention rates, many B2B brands have centred their customer experience strategy on the idea of customer satisfaction. It makes sense. A satisfied customer will surely be a loyal customer, right?

Not necessarily. Research shows that this focus on customer satisfaction often fails to translate into stronger brand loyalty. But how could this be? If your customer is satisfied with your service or product, why would they look elsewhere?

What B2B brands are overlooking is that there are two distinct types of customer satisfaction: rational satisfaction and emotional satisfaction.

Rationally satisfied customers are content with the products and services a company provides. However, they lack any real emotional connection. Meanwhile, emotionally satisfied customers are not only happy with a product/service; they have a strong emotional attachment to the company itself.

The issue is that many B2B CX programmes are designed around the assumption that business decision-making is based on hard reason. Companies often focus on meeting technical requirements to create rational satisfaction.

But multiple studies have found that emotionally satisfied customers are the ones that deliver enhanced value to a company. They buy more products, spend more on services, and are more likely to act as brand advocates. In contrast, the behaviour of rationally satisfied customers is virtually indistinguishable from dissatisfied customers—there is no loyalty. They will leave the moment a better deal comes along.

Satisfying customers on a rational level represents a minimum requirement for today’s businesses. We need to go a step further to build the strong human connections that drive enhanced financial performance. This requires a more complete view of customers —one that incorporates emotional dimensions.

Rather than thinking of CX strategy in terms of mere customer satisfaction, we need to think in terms of customer success.

What Is Customer Success?

Customer success is about building a mutually beneficial customer relationship that extends beyond the initial purchase.

The goal is to work in partnership with clients to meet their goals, and surpass their expectations of what they can achieve using your product or service.

Unlike customer service, where clients come to you with an issue, customer success is about anticipating challenges and proactively providing solutions.

You can view customer success management as an extension of account-based marketing. ABM aligns sales and marketing and establishes a relationship with clients by creating highly personalised experiences for members of target accounts. Customer success teams continue this work of relationship cultivation and creating good customer experiences throughout the length of the partnership.

Why Is Customer Success Important?

Realise that members of even the most hardened B2B buying team will still feel anxiety whenever they make a large purchase. After all, they have invested months—even years—of their time into finding the best solution for their needs. They now depend on you to help their business prosper.

But what if they made the wrong choice...? What if you don't provide sufficient onboarding? If their team does not know how to use your platform effectively, it could lose them revenue.

These are the thoughts that keep B2B buyers up a night.

Customer success teams soothe anxiety and boost client confidence by anticipating their rational AND emotional needs. They work closely across departments to understand each account and provide an above-and-beyond customer experience.

The result is that you not only satisfy but delight your clients, which ultimately increases your revenue in several ways:

• Improved customer loyalty and retention. When you consistently help clients achieve their goals, they will associate your company with their success. This reduces churn and customer acquisition costs. Because emotionally satisfied customers trust that you are invested in their needs, they are more likely to renew contracts. And when they need a new solution, they will turn to you first, rather than searching your competitors.

• Increased value of your accounts. By helping people tackle their lack of expertise, you open up opportunities to upsell and cross-sell. For example, an accounting firm might have clients with budgets tied up in bookkeeping services. By helping them to become more skilful at handling their accounts, the firm can shift the focus onto more lucrative financial solutions.

• Customer advocacy. Happy customers are more likely to recommend you to others by word of mouth—which plays an important role in the B2B purchase journey. According to a 2021 Gartner research paper, 76% of B2B buyers consult three or more advocacy sources before making a purchase decision. A customer success plan ensures that clients passionately advocate on behalf of your company when peers contact them for advice.

Now that we have covered the why of customer success management, let us dive into the how.

How to Create a Customer Success Plan

Identify Your Customer's End Goal

To build a customer success plan, you need to determine your client’s end goal and how you fit into that equation. Start by developing a deep understanding of your customer—their needs, problems, and behaviours.

Do not just depend on data. Ask your clients about their goals and regularly request customer feedback. Use social media listening tools, analyse your customer support chats, and invest in voice of the customer (VoC) research.

Map out Your Customer Experience Journey

The next step is to outline your customer experience journey and identify strategic points where you can make an impact.

Consider all the challenges your customers face—not only throughout their buyer's journey but while using your product/service. For instance, at what point might your product or service fall short? Or when could your competitors influence your customers? From there, determine how you will respond to these roadblocks to help ensure your customer’s success.

Also, consider what you want to achieve. What is the desired outcome at each step in the customer's journey? Do you want to retain customers, expand existing accounts, upsell a particular service, etc.?

While your plan should support your business objectives, still maintain a customer centric mindset. Remember, your goal is to build strong customer connections that drive long term recurring revenue. Do not compromise the trust of your customers for short-term gain.

Set up Touchpoints and Lines of Communication

A critical part of building a customer success plan is thinking about how your team will communicate with clients. You want to create touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle, from onboarding to upskilling, contract renewal, upsell/cross-selling, etc.

Picking the right time and place to reach out is crucial for making your efforts come across as helpful rather than pushy. Consider the channels you will use to reach customers and track the times of day when you get the best response. Also, something we can not stress enough is the importance of respecting your client’s communication preferences. Use opt-in forms and honour clients' requests if they unsubscribe from something.

Monitor Customer Interactions and Usage Patterns

To offer proactive help, monitor customers and understand how they use your platform. For instance, what are their job roles and what features do they most commonly use? Are they taking full advantage of all your product or service offers?

Remember, you don’t just want to create rational satisfaction by helping clients meet their goals. You want to create emotional satisfaction by helping them surpass their expectations of what they can achieve using your product.

It is also important to track where clients are in their customer journey. For example, is an account in the onboarding process, or are they an established customer ready to learn something new and unexpected? Platform usage will often decrease over time. Pinpointing where and why users drop off allows your customer success team to take action before problems arise.

Segment Your Accounts

You will also need to segment your accounts to know which are high-touch and which can have more automation. Doing so is especially important for scaling your customer success plan (more on that shortly).

Also, learn to recognise when you are on the path to losing an account. It should go without saying that all of your clients get a baseline of excellent support. However, focus additional resources on providing a VIP experience for high-value customers or those showing signs they are going to churn.

Establish Metrics to Measure Progress

Lastly, you will need to measure how you are performing against your objectives. Remember that both you and your clients should derive value from your customer success plan. It is a mutually beneficial relationship, so include performance metrics for both your company and your clients. For example, customer lifetime value (CLV), customer acquisition costs (CAC) net promoter score, and churn rate.

Having pre-defined metrics for each stage of your customer experience journey will help you determine the efficacy of your processes. You can see what works and where customers drop off to refine your approach.

For instance, say that your goal is for customers to complete the onboarding process within 60 days. However, you notice one customer segment has an average onboarding time of 75 days. This could show that you need to improve your approach for this type of account.

How to Scale Customer Success

As your business grows, you need to scale your success plan to manage customer interactions and maintain excellent service.

The first step is to design great processes and engaging content. For example, building comprehensive onboarding programmes and a self-serve knowledge base of articles, training videos, and webinars.

Your content library should provide clients with the information and guidance to succeed. Present information in a variety of ways and provide a balance of technical and emotional support.

You can use social live streams, for instance, to build a platform and community around your brand while enhancing your content library. You can further augment your knowledge base with more hands-on interaction (phone calls, face-to-face meetings, etc.) for higher-priority accounts.

Next is having a personalised way to deliver content and guide clients through your processes. This is where automation takes centre stage with dynamic workflows that drip feed content in response to customer interests and needs.

For example, as part of your onboarding programme, you can create an email sequence that takes them step-by-step through the process. But more than offering generic advice, the system can make personalised blog article recommendations based on the reader’s behavioural triggers. This way you can use the same basic email sequence to address the diverse needs of members of your client account team.

However, it is important to balance human and machine elements. In some circumstances, an automated system will provide a superior customer experience. In other cases, a one-to-many experience—such as a live webinar with a customer success rep—will better serve your client. Regularly ask for feedback about account management and be ready to adapt your processes according to customer needs.

Customer Success = Business Success

To create a great customer experience, your goal needs to be to inspire something more than mere satisfaction.

Don't just help customers to achieve their goals. Instead, surpass their expectations of your brand experience. Aim to nurture lasting emotional bonds and inspire the type of passionate advocacy that will pay significant financial dividends.

Achieving this goal requires you to have a customer success program in place. A plan to ensure that marketing, sales, and customer support align towards the continued happiness and success of your customers.

1827 Marketing can help. Our expert consultants will help you develop strategies, content, and tools necessary to nurture long-term relationships that support sustainable growth. We would love to hear from you.