You’re looking to create the perfect customer experience, so you already have a customer survey, what company doesn’t these days? It may even be a regular annual customer survey because you understand the importance of knowing what your customers think in this highly competitive, turbulent business world.

A recent article by McKinsey Quarterly delved into the importance of a customer feeling as though the service has been personalised for their needs alone. Their CEO Guide to customer experience gave accurate feedback on the significance of transforming the complete service provided to key accounts rather than just separate touchpoints. Through understanding and gaining feedback on the entire journey, companies can focus on creating a positive impact on their account’s satisfaction with their services. Customer satisfaction has never been more important for B2B companies.

In B2B companies there are fewer and larger customers than ever before. The top 10-20 accounts often provide more than 80% of revenue and profit. So, the biggest risk to our best relationships is, therefore, complacency.

Ask yourself these following questions:

• If you lost one of these customers, what would you do?
• How are you monitoring these customer relationships?
• Do you understand what is important to these customers?
• Do you know how you are perceived by these customers?

How do you find out what’s important to your key accounts?

Customer surveys’ are a good starting point for identifying what each of your customers’ thinks of you. Both what is important to them and how you are performing in these areas. These customer surveys can be anonymous and with the correct demographic questions still provide you with insights for each of your major customers. Annual Customer Surveys are the foundation of your strategic relationships and provide benchmarking and practical actions for improvement.

How do you make a customer survey actionable?

To make a customer survey actionable, it must be specific. This information can be gained from a small number of demographic questions, which when correctly determined will provide insights that can ensure actions specific to individual departments and managers. Making departments and managers accountable is the best way of ensuring progress. This ongoing progress is dependent on executive sponsorship of your organisation's customer transformation.

The Executive sponsorship of your organisation's customer transformation is a key factor in demonstrating to account’s that their feedback has been acknowledged, and changes are being made. The cross-functional implementation of customer feedback leads to a far more holistic and sustainable change.

In this video McKinsey principal, Ron Ritter explores the challenges and benefits that come when companies truly put customers first.

Seeing through customers’ eyes

McKinsey principal Ron Ritter explores the challenges and benefits that come when companies truly put customers first.

So, create an exceptional customer experience and set yourself apart from your competitors.