Medallia: B2B Customer Experience Benchmark Report

A good customer experience is a great way for B2B businesses to win and keep buyers, but a bad customer experience can easily drive buyers away. A new report from the Medallia Research Institute examines the common practices of B2B professionals who excel in customer experience.

First, the report breaks down respondents into categories, with “Leaders” being those CX professionals who use customer feedback to achieve at least six of nine business outcomes. “Laggards,” on the other hand, achieve only one outcome at most.

Leaders are more likely to engage employees in improving the customer experience. 91% of leaders cite listening to employees as a way to understand and improve the customer experience (vs. 62% of Laggards). Another 82% of leaders have a clear process for employees to come up with ideas for improving the customer experience and engaging with the company, compared to only 53% of Laggards. In addition, only 16% of Laggards share feedback with employees responsible for taking action on specific customer comments or issues, compared to 58% of Leaders.

Among companies that rely on partners and distributors, Leaders (89%) are also more likely than Laggards (52%) to collect feedback from those partners and distributors.

Additionally, Leaders (70%) are more likely than Laggards (45%) to have a formal communications strategy to drive understanding of customer feedback and communicate results and successes.

At a time when marketers are prioritizing customer lifetime value, Leaders are more likely to put customer feedback into action. About 27% of Leaders use feedback to introduce new products, services, or practices (vs. 13% of Laggards), and 23% use feedback to improve existing products, services, and operations (vs. 14% of Laggards). Leaders are also more likely than Laggards to use feedback when preparing for customer renewal or expansion opportunities (26% vs. 15%, respectively). This is important because research shows that only about one-third of B2B marketers (35%) believe their company is effective at maximizing revenue potential from key accounts.

So what are the benefits of being a customer experience leader? Leaders (92%) are more likely to achieve positive revenue growth than laggards (79%).

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