論説
Radical Thought: Infuse Account Planning with the Customer’s Perspective
Radical Thought: Infuse Account Planning with the Customer’s Perspective
Ignoring customers’ sentiment leaves money on the table.
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論説
Ignoring customers’ sentiment leaves money on the table.
Most large business-to-business companies have long used account size to guide account planning efforts, focusing attention and resources on a few large clients. They tend to overlook the role that customer experience measurement can play in guiding account plans.
Recent Bain & Company research finds that as few as 22% of B2B companies consistently measure and act on their customers’ experience. Among companies that do measure the experience, those metrics rarely connect with the sales process. For instance, most companies don’t marry readouts of satisfaction surveys or Net Promoter Score℠ results (a key metric of loyalty and advocacy) with account planning efforts. A team might examine customer sentiment in aggregate or for one step of the experience, but fail to connect these insights to individual buyers, opportunities with individual accounts, or particular sales campaigns.
Consider a common situation where the head of sales at a telecommunications company asks for an account and share-of-wallet assessment in advance of the company’s quarterly leadership meeting. Her team uses a combination of customer relationship management and sales data to analyze performance and inform which areas to prioritize and which sales plays to deploy in those areas. On the surface, the output seems insightful (see Figure 1). It highlights the largest customers as well as a few midsized accounts with a low share of wallet.
What this picture misses is each customer’s perception of the company, which informs willingness to buy and to recommend the company to others. As a result, the group is overlooking opportunities and leaving money on the table.
Adding customer sentiment data to the equation creates a far more useful picture (see Figure 2). Two accounts, roughly equal in current revenue, such as accounts A and B or C and D, have very different perceptions of the company and thus require tailored sales and service motions. Considering customer sentiment clarifies the opportunities across accounts.
Armed with this information, companies across industries can sort accounts into several useful categories, lighting up the most promising opportunities:
To see how this account prioritization informs practical actions, consider the recent experience of the services arm of a global technology firm. It enjoyed a market-leading customer experience but ran into problems while transitioning to a software-as-a-service model, including stagnant growth in the installed hardware customer base.
The company used a deeper understanding of advocacy and share of wallet to improve its growth outlook. The assessment revealed untapped cross-selling opportunities to key accounts. In one instance, the account was a strong promoter with a low share of wallet. So the company firm mapped all the individuals it did business with at the account, which had decentralized purchasing across geographies. Two buyers were happy with the firm, but a third was using a competitor. Asking the two buyers to recommend the firm to the third, the company paved the path to roughly $20 million of new revenue.
Next, customer feedback opened the door to upselling premium offers to certain customers that were most likely to be interested, such as those in a subset of industries that saw greater value in the solution. In those cases, premium offers earned higher customer loyalty, despite having a higher price. As part of the new upselling moves, the company used anecdotes from customer feedback to bring a clear story to decision makers at prioritized accounts.
Analyzing customer feedback also highlighted opportunities to improve the experience. The technology company learned, for example, that several features in one product line caused problems for customers. Yet no group in the organization would take ownership for the problems, as Engineering and Service each blamed the other. By combining customer feedback with operational data on issues submitted to the contact center, the technology firm identified both a coding product design issue and a support issue. It could then address the issues from several angles. On the product front, the Engineering team fixed features in the next version of the product. Select customer support issues were rerouted to more experienced employees who could resolve them faster. And the company rolled out training for the entire support team.
Finally, the company established a “CFO-certified” link between Net Promoter Scores and profitable growth, with tracking and accountability mechanisms to keep the relevant groups on task. For example, the customers who are promoters have a 10-percentage-point higher renewal rate and a 2-percentage point-higher revenue growth rate than detractors (see Figure 3). So far, the results have been encouraging. The firm identified opportunities representing up to 10% additional revenues in a previously declining business unit; it realized a 20-point improvement in its Net Promoter Score during the pilot phase; and it reduced support calls by more than 20%.
Companies committed to building a nuanced view of the customer experience that will achieve the full potential of account planning can start by answering a set of high-gain questions:
Companies that learn each customer’s priorities and perceptions in detail will be better positioned to uncover high-value opportunities, triage the rest, and allocate sales and marketing resources more effectively.