The One Book That Will Change Your B2B CX Program Forever

Hey, welcome to the Account Experience podcast. My name's Adam Durrell, and I'm your host for season two. But I'm making a nice bridge between this season and season one. Today, I'm delighted to bring on Ian Luck, who's the vice President of marketing globally for Customer Gauge, who's just put together this most incredible book. It's like, more than 100 pages of findings about what there is to know, the state of the market of B2B CX. I'm going to go through some of the detail in this, so think of this as a very special episode. You can get some background on it, and I really hope it encourages you to go and dig deeper. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Ian Lucky. Hi, Ian.

Hey. Thanks, Adam. Good to be back. I just want to. It feels kind of feels like home. Coming back to the Account Experience podcast, I think you guys have been doing a great job. I just want to throw that out there. You and Dave and even Camilla have really stepped up and done some amazing interviews, so props on that.

Thank you so much. Well, you certainly left us some great shoes to fill. But, you know, I'm hoping that we can also get you back, you know, maybe for season three or something like that, because, you know, you also did some great work in it. But let's dive deep into what you've been up to. So, Ian, you've just dropped on public release the state of the art of B2B experience stats. Did I get that title right?

Yeah, the state of B2B account experience. And it's a B2B NPS and CX benchmarks report. It's a long title, but there's a lot in there. So we kind of had to cover a lot of ground. Yeah.

Now, by the way, you talk about a lot in there. There really is a lot in there because it's more than a hundred pages, something like 60 pages of the research that you've done, another 40 pages of comparisons for each industry, which is really amazing. I've never seen that anywhere else. And then you've got these great spotlights from companies who are talking about their own CX programs. Really huge piece of work. So I really want to find out, you know, how did you come to put this together?

Yeah, it really started. I mean, I'm obviously VP of Marketing, so I talked to a lot of prospects. I'm on calls with sales often. And the thing that we just kept hearing over and over and over again is there's no B2B benchmarks for experience out there. There's no B2B NPS benchmarks. There's no playbook for these companies to kind of say, all right, well, this is what everybody else is doing, and this is maybe what you should focus on moving forward. So early on. And I think, Adam, you identified this even back in. I think 2016 was our first benchmarks report. Believe it or not, it's been spent that long. You had the idea to put it together back in 2016. We launched one, then did one in 2018. And this year we really wanted to go deep, and we started collecting data way back in 2018.

So what we did is we took.

A program assessment where people would answer about 31 questions, and it would spit out a custom PDF based off of those questions with benchmarks and recommended actions in their program. We got about 800 companies to actually take that assessment, you know, plus 31 questions. That's roughly 24,000 data points, which we're definitely excited about. I mean, that's. That's the largest. That alone is the largest experience database on the planet for B2B, which is really cool. And then we're really excited about that. We started kind of circulating that internally, and I think Roy, who's our head of Program Excellence, suggested that we integrate it with some of our anonymous customer benchmarks on the account experience side. And that is really where this thing kind of took on its own life of its own and took off, because the insights paired with the account experience customer data is really where the benchmarks kind of morphed into this, you know, straight up B2B Experience Playbook data backed all that good stuff that you want to see in a report. It's in there now, which is really cool.

So let me just get this straight. So you've got something like 800 companies that are reporting about the B2B programs, and then you're also contrasting that with customer gauges data to understand where the majority of companies are and then where customer gauge customers are.

Right.

And those who were doing what we call an account experience program, who are doing proper measurement, acting on it, and growing on that stuff. Well, okay, first question for me on that stuff is that, did you notice any significant differences between, you know, the massive companies out there and the customer gauge customers?

I think that's the really interesting part. Right. When we. When we put these two data sets together, we weren't really sure what it would look like. I mean, we kind of had an inkling that, hey, our customers are doing things the right way. And we knew based off of their results that they're probably doing things the right way, but we really weren't sure how it compared to the industry overall. And so as we were kind of going through this exercise with Roy, it became very clear, like crystal clear, that Counter Experience customers are experiencing higher nps, higher retention rates, higher referral rates, better culture, buy in all of these things that you want to see in a program. I think there's some magic sauce that's going on with the whole account experience piece that is just completely missing from the B2B market at large. And that's kind of what we found. And I can go into some details on it, but that's. Overall, the more interesting takeaway is that account experience, if you do it the proper way, is going to give you significant gains over just a standard traditional experience program.

Well, I think one of the things I'm most proud of in the book and the way you've delivered it, is that you're completely open source about it. You really lay out exactly what is needed to succeed. And then not only that, is you show the data, the amount of increased net promoter score, you can get an increase retention. I mean, it's like, this is a playbook for success. Right. So I love that about it. So it's not just okay, customer gauge. Customers are doing it because we encourage people to do it. But with the right attention to detail, anybody out there could follow the book and make some huge impacts in the program.

Yeah, and that's ultimately what we wanted to show is we wanted to kind of go away from the benchmarks piece. And of course they're important. Everybody wants to see where they're at. Everybody wants to know how their program stacks up versus their industry peers or the market overall.

And.

But I think what was really missing, and we talked to a lot of prospects, guys, the thing that was really missing was the playbook of like, all.

Right, if you just do these 10.

Things in your program tomorrow, or at least put a roadmap in place to start doing them, you'll experience significant gain. And that's really what we set out to do, is if you look at the book, guys, we'll link it in the comments of the show description and all that stuff. But, you know, shameless plug here. But I mean, ultimately, what it really shows is we broke it down in tips. So literally, we did, I think, six sections of the book, so measuring feedback, acting on feedback, growing from feedback. And then we did a industry overview section. And then, as Adam said, A B2B spotlight section where we kind of dove into, you know, companies programs. But in those individual sections we broke it out by tips. So literally, you want to get higher email open rates in your surveys. This is what the data shows for the industry benchmark. But then you here's like a bunch of tips on how to do that based off of the data, based off of the account experience customers doing it. So I really, we really wanted to make it as tactical as possible as, you know, effective for you guys as possible to just completely integrate into your program and start on that path towards account experience.

I take a few things away. I mean, there's a lot in this book and it does require some time to go through it. But I think that that's, that actually speaks to its seriousness. This is not just like a one pager of things to do. So I took these three points away from it with maybe a four. So I'm just going to talk you through it and then just maybe you can see if I'm on the right track. For me, that seemed that the easiest impact that somebody could do in their organization with a B2B program is to set some targets. Number one, you know, which is like multiple contacts per account, making sure that you're covering a percentage of your revenue and doing it multiple times a year.

Right.

Number two, closing the loop and closing the loop at speed. Again, really obvious, but a lot of people miss it according to the stats. You know. Well, maybe you can fill me. I think it's only 60% of the companies aren't doing this. And then the other thing, which is blindingly obvious, which is to attach revenue to it, because then you can work out the impact. So those three things, setting targets, closing the loop, setting revenue, and then you can work out your ROI from that. Did I get that broadly right? Is that basically the secret to success?

Yeah, you pretty much nailed it. I mean, there's obviously a couple of different nuances in there. I mean, it's a large book, but I think those are the big takeaways for me as well, Adam, where I think it's like 42% of companies, B2B companies, aren't setting targets. And we have data that shows that if you do set targets, your NPS will increase, your retention rate will increase. I mean, that seems like kind of a no duh for a lot of companies, but it's one of those. It's like a New Year's resolution. Right. Everybody should have some sort of a target for the year. And those that stick to it generally Hit their goal. The ones that fall off, you know, try again next year. But targets are big. And closing the loop, I think is if I can narrow down one big thing, it's closing the loop because that has the largest impact on NPS and retention. So. And it's still shocking to us, to me, to everybody that's read this report, how many B2B companies out there are still not closing the loop.

Loop.

I mean, if you're asking for feedback, you should, you should follow up with your customers. I mean, that's just good business. You've talked about this at length, Adam, and I love it because it's just being. It's doing the right thing, I think is the way you put it.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan, but, you know, it's not just closing the loop and it's the other thing I learned from it. You got to do it at speed.

Yeah.

And I thought I was kind of. I could see how things had moved on since the last time you published this. So now it's about closing it in 48 hours or less, Right?

Correct.

But doing that, closing the loop, closing it 48 hours or less. I think you said something like an eight and a half point increase in net promoter.

Yeah, absolutely.

Not that anybody should be targeted on net Promoter, but if you link the Net promoter and retention, that's like a no brainer.

And I think that's what we found in the book is a lot of these large B2B enterprises that we work with often, you know, one point of net promoter can equal multi millions of dollars coming in every quarter. So it's a huge one.

Yeah, it's a huge one.

This episode of the Account Experience podcast is sponsored by CustomerGage, the leading B2B account experience software that ties revenue to your experience data in real time to help you make better account centric decisions that drive revenue growth.

Quick question.

What do you guys think is the.

Number one reason B2B experience programs fail?

Believe it or not, it's lack of C suite buy. In CustomerGage's research with MIT, they've found the quickest way to align yourselves with the C suite is to actually align with what they care about most, which is revenue. That's why CustomerGage is literally built from the ground up to maximize and track.

The revenue contribution from your experience program in real time.

Companies like dhl, Anheuser Busch, Heineken, uh, yeah, we get a good amount of FreeBear1 login, IronMountain, H&R Block, SuperOffice, and SugarCRM are already using Customer Gauge to maximize their growth by tying their programs to revenue. And with over $10 billion worth of account revenue actively being managed in Customer Gauge, yeah, that's billion. With a B, they're the leader in the space. But maybe even more interesting, they found that once you get alignment with that C suite, you, the needs of these B2B practitioners or the program champions are evolving too. In such a complex account environment, it can be really tough to measure and act on feedback quickly across multiple departments, divisions or even locations. Luckily, Customer Gauge has you covered there as well with account native features that easily help you not only measure the feedback for multiple stakeholders in an account, but act on that feedback in real time.

Because?

Because at the end of the day, if you're not empowering your frontline staff.

With the right insights to address customer.

Issues, you're going to be dealing with a churn issue. It's not a matter of if, it's really a matter of when. Customer Gauge helps you distribute this experience data across your entire organization, regardless of department, regardless of location, regardless of division, all in real time. No manual spreadsheets or a team of analysts are needed. Customer Gauge's mission is to help B2B companies harness the power of account centric growth to drive meaningful change in their businesses. And that's a powerful thing. If you want to see Customer Gauge in action, go ahead and check out CustomerGage.com and get a demo of account experience today. You won't regret it.

I think, I guess one of the things, I mean we could really go into this all day. I guess the message really is for people to read the book. But there's one thing I really want to touch on, and again, this is still a shockingly large gap is the companies that don't know what their retention rate is. I think it's like 50% companies out there are not measuring or don't know their retention rate. And that to me that's shocking because that is the way to grow a business these days is to figure out how to retain your customers better. And you know, that's what SaaS multiples are built on. We see the, you know, the huge growth in these software companies out there and it's because they look after their customers, they care about retention. And I think it's the biggest lesson for non. For B2B companies that aren't doing that. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think it reminds me of this might have been like the first month I met you, Adam. I think we were sitting at A hotel at a. I forget what it was, but I was asking you, what are you trying to do? Like, what is the goal of the company? And you said, I want to make retention as cool as acquisition. And I think you even said, I want that on my tombstone is the way you put it is like, I want to make retention as cool as acquisition. And that's ultimately still what we're battling to. To this day. Right. Is these companies, and we fall in this trap as well, where acquisition is kind of king. That's what your board expects to see. But what we found in this report is that the companies that pay attention to retention are growing faster than their competition, are growing faster than the industry at large. Companies that are maximizing the impact of the referral programs, I mean, are making more money quicker. And I think that's. Ultimately, we do this almost from a selfish standpoint of, like, how can we improve? And we've really hypercharged our referrals lately. And we get anywhere between 20 and 40% of our net new business from referrals every quarter. So, I mean, it really is a shocking amount of people that still just don't even know the retention rate. And that's just crazy to me because they're throwing money out the window.

Yeah. I think that comes back to the thing about targeting and doing it. But, hey, I'm proud of the fact we got a high net promoter rate, home net promoter score, and we were able to parlay that into some great referrals. Ian, before we go and, you know, I think this is. We should think of this as a, you know, a teaser for the books. Do you have a favorite stat or favorite pull from the book that you can share with us?

Oh, man. I think there's one section that I really love, and it's the response rate section. And I think we've been talking about this at length at the company as well.

But.

But basically, we have some stats guys that break up response rates from like 0 to 10%, 11 to 20%. And these are. These are account response rates, which we really preach at Customer Engage, which is not just a single contact. It's getting a response from multiple different contacts in the organization. Right. So. But we have a stat that directly links this increased response rate, account response rate to NPS increases. So just to paint a picture for you, so 0 to 10% account response rate, your NPS is on, on average, 30, 31 to 40% account response rate.

Your Nps is like 55.

Whoa. That's a massive increase, right?

I've seen that growth.

That's so in my opinion, if you.

Want to make a massive impact on your program, get revenue in all of that stuff. Focus on getting back to your customers, focus on response rate, getting them to understand that if they give you feedback, you're going to take it seriously, you're going to follow up with them, you're going to let them know what you did with that feedback. And we're. We really started to do that customer engage a while ago, and it's made a massive impact on our business as well. So I love that one. There's a million things. I mean, I wrote the bulk of it, so I'm kind of partial to a lot of it, but I think that one's the biggest one that sticks out to me right now.

Oh, that's great. Ian, how can people get hold of this book? Do they have to pay for it? Where can they find it?

Yeah, don't have to pay for it right out.

So it's free. All of our research is free. We feel strongly about Adam. This is, again, from you, open sourcing a lot of this stuff where we just want to provide insights to the marketplace. We're not asking for $1,000 consulting fee like a lot of other companies are. It's completely free of charge. It's. It's over 150 pages of insights. You can get it@customergage.com right on that homepage there. Check it out. Highly encourage you guys to reach out to Adam or myself. If you have any questions around the report, we're happy to walk you through it.

Oh, that's awesome. And what's next? What markets are you tackling next? Is there anything specific you're up to?

Yeah. So in the process of putting together the report, we found that there's a lot of industries that could use additional insights. So one that comes right to mind is consumer packaged goods. We work with Heineken, Anheuser Busch, Coca Cola, and they're just, they're such big companies and they have such a wide reach across the globe that they're looking for insights that can help them gain market share, things like that. So what we're going to work on next is kind of a consumer package goods specific report. But then we're going to dive into other industries like telecommunications, which we know have a massive churn problem, and then tech and manufacturing, all these great, great industries that honestly are investing in experience. I think that's kind of where we need to take this thing next is really provide those custom insights for those Industries. Wow.

That's fantastic. Ian, thank you so much for joining me today on this very special episode. It's really an awesome piece of work, and you and your team should be super proud of this. It's really great. You know, it really is, as you put it, the biggest B2B best practice benchmark book on the planet. And it really is worth downloading.

Yeah, we could probably shorten the title, but I appreciate that.

Thanks so much for joining us today and see you on the next Account Experience podcast.

Thanks, Adam.