This is the first in a two-part series on boosting customer loyalty in B2B service and support environments.

Those of you who have followed CCC’s research over the past few years know that our point of view—backed up by a lot of quantitative and qualitative data—is that service organizations should focus not on delighting their customers, but on reducing the amount of effort those customers must put forth to get their issues resolved (if you haven’t seen our work on this, check out the article we published in HBR last summer). 

But while this is universally true and, we’d argue, the right goal for all service organizations to pursue, there’s an important nuance to the story if you primarily serve business customers in your service organization. 

Unlike the consumer world, B2B service organizations have the unique opportunity to drive positive loyalty through the service channel by teaching their customers something new during the service interaction itself.  In other words, not just resolving the customer’s issue in as low-effort a manner as possible, but having done so, also offering unique insights about how to leverage your products and services in new ways—ways that will help make end-users’ jobs easier. 

Unlike businesses that deal directly with the consumer via the call center, B2B organizations tend not to interact with decision-makers, but rather with end users of the company’s products and services.  And, from research we’ve conducted in CCC’s sister program, the Sales Executive Council, we know that the thing decision makers care about above all else when it comes to picking a supplier to do business with is whether a given supplier has widespread support across the organization.  In other words, they don’t make decisions in a vacuum, they tend to go with the “consensus choice” when picking vendors.

When we studied the impact customer support can have in driving end-user word of mouth (both good and bad), we found that end users are looking for two things:

1. An easy service interaction (just like in B2C, end users aren’t looking to spend a lot of time and effort getting their issues resolved)
2. New insights that will make them more productive and successful in their jobs.  Put differently, suppliers who can resolve issues in a low-effort manner and can teach end-users something new when they contact customer support are putting their organizations in a great position to boost customer loyalty—to win over end-users who will, in turn, spread positive word of mouth about you as a supplier to the folks who hold the purse strings in their organization.

This finding, of course, begs the question:

What kind of insights should B2B customer support organizations look to deliver to end-users? 

I’ll answer THAT question in part two of this two-part post (to come later in June).

Related posts:

1. Service and Support’s Role in Driving Product Retention
2. 6 Myths About Customer Loyalty
3. Are You A Low-Effort Service Organization?
4. How to Build Strong B2B Customer Relationships
5. The Secret to Cross-/Up-Sell in Service and Support