4 B2B Customer Love Factors

Every business in every industry has competition. While winning new customers is a necessity for growth, equally important is customer retention. Aside from your product or service providing a clear value to your customer, earning love from customers is a direct result of your actions. Well known B2C brands including the likes of Disney, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Zappos and Nordstrom, among others receive love from loyal customers. For B2B companies to earn customer love, consider these four practices.

Culture

It all starts with a culture of customer love. A culture that is passionate about serving the customer. This culture stems from the CEO. A CEO that embodies a commitment to providing a great customer experience first and foremost. An exemplary B2B CEO I've previously highlighted is Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte.

Listen

As basic as this seems, the fact is many B2B businesses don't listen so well. It's a mindset thing that stems from the C-Suite. A B2B business that listens to what the customer is saying enjoys stronger relationships and often learns of ways to improve the customer experience and even identifies new product offerings as a result of listening well. B2B organizations that use the Net Promoter Score methodology enjoy more customer love than they do detractors.

Listening comes in the form of old fashion conversations as well as through social business technology. We're all buried in email. Make a concerted effort to initiate face-to-face conversations with customers. Sometimes it's possible to meet with customers in person, but that's not always feasible. Using online meetings with video conferencing is the next best thing to maintain face-to-face contact with customers. Create a structured program for key customer communication across all product divisions. Branch out to include smaller customers too.

Social business software can also strengthen your listening capabilities. Understanding your customer's online behavior can provide valuable actionable insights through a unified view of your customer.

Empower Your Employees

We're living in the age of "everyone is in marketing." Your employees have the potential to be eyes and ears for valuable customer interaction. Give employees a reason to engage with customers in person and through other channels including social, with a serve-first mindset.

Be Human

At the end of each interview on my Social Business Engine podcast I ask each guest my "one thing" question: "if there is one thing you could change about the way that business is conducted today, what would that be?" Overwhelmingly, the most common response from my guests is to engage with customers "person-to-person." As Tom Schwab from Goodbye Crutches says: "It's not B2B, it's human-to-human or person-to-person." He should know, his company has no marketing or sales department. Goodbye Crutches, which sells scooters and walkers direct to customers and also works closely with healthcare providers, engages with customers extensively, even re-naming the company because of customer input. A customer told Tom that his products allowed him to say "goodbye to crutches." Even the tag line, comes from a customer suggestion. That's customer love!

In business we don't use the word love very often. We restrict this word to a special emotion limited to close family and friends. The truth is when a B2B or B2C company treats the customer special, really special, we can develop a deep relationship that can be characterized as a form of love. In a hyper competitive business climate, customer satisfaction is not good enough. We need customers to love us us.