Customers aren’t happy with their post-sale experience, reports business-to-business research firm SiriusDecisions. The company draws its findings from a survey of 450 B2B customers in a broad range of industries and business sizes.
“The most important competitive differentiator in B2B is the customer experience,” says Megan Heuer, vice president of research of SiriusDecisions. “Far too often, B2B organizations portray themselves as customer-centric without really understanding what customers want after they buy. In order to keep current customers, attract new ones and ultimately grow revenues and profits, B2B companies must listen to customers, find out where there are gaps, then take meaningful action on what they hear. The good news is that our study showed that some relatively small changes could have a very big impact on improving the value customers get after they buy.”
In its survey, SiriusDecisions found that 80 percent of B2B buying decisions are based on a buyer’s direct or indirect customer experience, rather than the offering or price. Furthermore, less than half of respondents say that their providers offered them the needed value post-sale, and as a result, only half plan to buy more from their current providers.
The survey also revealed that executives and end users have very different perceptions of their post-sale experience. In every post-sale phase, the two customer roles reported almost no overlap in their post-sale content and interaction preferences, and described completely different gaps in what they’re getting today compared to what they want.
