A Comprehensive Guide on B2B Customer Journey

B2B customer journey is complicated and has numerous touchpoints influencing the customer experience. It is difficult to efficiently map out the numerous user personas and purchasing procedures in the B2B customer journey. 

However, knowing your customers' experiences is critical to increasing conversions and maintaining users. Customers loyal to your brand return for repeat business and advocate for your brand and enhance new customers' faith in your products and services. 

But how can you examine your journey and make the necessary improvements? We've created an essential guide to assist you in doing so.

What is a B2B Customer Journey?

The B2B customer journey is the combination of touchpoints and engagements a customer has with a B2B organization, beginning with their initial encounter and ending with post-purchase.

Consider a B2B buyer who learns about a SaaS software firm that can meet their specific demands. There are several other measures to take before deciding to make a purchase. Even after they've purchased it, there's still the setup, ensuring they're getting the most out of it, and so on. All of this is part of the consumer journey.

The journey's enduring impact creates the all-important customer experience. The B2B user journey spans the entire customer experience with your business, from lead generation to renewals.

The Stages of the B2B Customer Journey

The B2B customer journey is divided into five stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, and promotion. The individual stages may be further subdivided or changed based on the type of business (for example, some businesses may require onboarding or have multiple purchase points).

1. Awareness

The buyer learns about your company's brand, goods, and services. Marketing, with sales support, will play a significant role at this time. Advertising (out of the house, social, visual, direct mail), events, public relations, and SEO are all ways of raising awareness.

2. Consideration

‍At this level, your brand demonstrates its capacity to resolve any issues that the consumer may be experiencing, addressing the pain areas that have caused them to seek a solution.

3. Conversion/ Decision

‍Customers will decide which product or service to purchase. Digital content will frequently be at the forefront of delivering critical information for this decision.

4. Loyalty

‍A consumer who has made one purchase and had a positive experience is more likely to return to make another or to renew their arrangement. Building outstanding experiences at the beginning of the customer journey will make this stage more reachable; nevertheless, building loyalty over time requires continuous experience to satisfy consumer expectations.

5. Promotion/ Expansion

‍Customers who are upsold and cross-sold products and services are more likely to renew their agreements with your business and expand their relationship with you into new areas.

How to Optimize the B2B Customer Journey?

More than anything else, organizations can optimize the journey, generate growth, and boost customer retention by listening to consumer input and taking action to improve the experience consistently.

1. Create a Customer Journey Map

Mapping the end-to-end B2B customer journey will help you better identify which touchpoints are generating problems, what can be improved, and what efforts should be made to ensure a seamless customer experience.

Here are six stages to assist you in developing your travel map.

(i) Examine Typical Purchasing Groups

In a B2B context, numerous persons frequently participate, each with their own tasks and responsibilities. According to Gartner, the typical buying group for a sophisticated B2B solution includes six to ten decision-makers. And they will all have distinct conditions that you must meet. Also, ensure that you comprehend their amount of effect on purchasing decisions.

(ii) Recognize your Client's Objectives

What demands are your buyers attempting to meet, or challenges are they attempting to solve? Take the time to understand their motives to grasp better the value you'll bring.

(iii) Utilize Data and Analytics

Analytics is a valuable tool in your customer journey arsenal. It can assist you in moving away from making subjective judgments and towards dealing with cold, hard facts. To acquire a complete trip picture, combine data from several sources, such as your CRM or customer experience platform.

(iv) Create the Journey Stages

As previously said, your specific customer journey map will be determined by your company's operations. To make things easier, start with a generic template (like the generic stage layout above) and then break it down into more complex components as you go. It can assist in putting yourself in the shoes of your consumer (perhaps presuming one of your buyer personas) and going through the phases as an experiment.

(v) List the Various Touchpoints

B2B touchpoints, such as sites, content strategy, and organic search, are shared with B2C. Others, on the other hand, are more focused on B2B. Demos, sales meetings, and onboarding must all be planned. A digital customer journey is becoming increasingly popular, but don't forget about traditional channels like print media.

(vi) Set your Own Objectives

It's also a good idea to remember the end results as you go through the procedure. Ultimately, you'll want outcomes in areas like retention and client pleasure. Gather customer feedback and compare it to your business metrics to assess if you met these objectives.

2. Use a CX Management Platform to Assist With Optimization

Using digital tools, like a CX management platform, can make taking action easier and more natural. Visualizing consumer and financial data alongside insights can allow you to clarify future steps and consistently deliver the right experience to the relevant stakeholder.

3. Determine Responsible Teams, Share Insights, and Act

Identifying the teams in charge of each stage of the customer experience and giving them the information they need to act can greatly improve the results you observe. Offering client feedback data and explaining the necessary steps might strengthen the strategic direction.

Rather than leaving teams to operate by rote, advise which measures will have the greatest impact to make their task easier.

4. Take a Comprehensive Approach to the Customer Journey

Managing different client experience stages can often be compartmentalized throughout your organization. It is possible that numerous teams are working on the same procedure but are not communicating their findings or the steps they intend to take.

Keep all teams informed of the insights you discover and the actions you intend, and assist them in developing strong ties between touchpoints to guarantee the customer journey is not disrupted.

5. Recognize the Emotional Depth of Each Touchpoint

Despite the fact that you may be interacting with multiple stakeholders at each stage of the B2B customer journey, your customers' engagement can often be influenced by how each touchpoint makes individual stakeholders feel.

For example, if your customer's installation team finds your support center difficult to use, they may seek a better experience elsewhere. Obtaining precise customer stakeholder feedback on key touchpoints, rather than just the entire customer connection with your business, can help you better customize experiences to the desired outcomes.

6. After a Transaction, Remember to Nurture your Customers

When a lead-generating opportunity converts into a sale, it can be tempting to call it quits. However, continued nurturing can differentiate between high customer attrition and ongoing business growth. Getting your clients enthused about your other goods or future advancements will help you achieve more stable company outcomes.

7. Pay Attention to the Needs of your Customers

Listening to client demands is often the key to creating a solution that a customer will buy into. Though your product may solve an immediate need, renewal, and retention, occur when you foresee client wants and give answers to future difficulties. Regular consumer sentiment assessments assist you in identifying these demands and acting accordingly.

The Post-Sales B2B Customer Journey

The post-sales customer journey must provide good experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations, beginning with the purchase stage and continuing through the growth and expansion stage indicated above.

The following are critical steps in the post-sales customer journey to achieve customer retention:

1. Implementation

A product or service's initial distribution and deployment is critical for retaining customers. To avoid disappointment at this customer journey stage, the brand promises that the customer has been subjected to must be delivered. The implementation must meet the customer's expectations.

Not only should the product or service meet expectations, but it should also be provided and accessed simply and conveniently for the customer. Because B2B sales frequently depend on creating strong customer connections, onboarding may necessitate assistance, training, or intensive human support.

2. Support

Access to help is an important aspect of the customer journey. Whether providing digital support through FAQs or self-service information centers or delivering particular, personalized customer care choices, getting this step right is critical to ensuring concerns are handled immediately and efficiently. Offering the correct support option at the right time for the right customer can mean the difference between a renewal and a customer defecting to a competitor.

3. Renewal

Customers who have had positive experiences with your brand and have learned to trust it are more inclined to renew. Upselling and cross-selling products, on the other hand, will necessitate your team's understanding of unique consumer difficulties and pain spots rather than offering irrelevant options. Using customer data to modify the alternatives you provide consumers eager to renew is critical.

Customer Touchpoints in the B2B Customer Journey

Mapping your customer journey can help you pinpoint exactly what your consumers do when they do it and why they do it. It enables you to identify where customers' attention may be waning, where the experience can be improved, or how businesses can make each encounter as good as the last.

Your team should consider the following at each client touchpoint:

• What is the consumer likely thinking, feeling, or doing in the interaction?
• What do we want people to think, feel, or do, and how can we tailor their trip?
• What barriers might prevent clients from engaging with this touchpoint?
• How can we overcome these challenges?

You may use data to adjust these touchpoints further to spark the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors you want to happen by obtaining client feedback. You can also incorporate staff feedback and observations to identify and remedy issues preventing clients from advancing further along their journey.

How can RevenueHero Help with B2B Customer Journey?

RevenueHero is invaluable for any business looking to understand better and improve its B2B customer journey. With advanced insights, customers can be better informed of which aspects of their journey are working and where they can improve. 

For example, RevenueHero's deep analytics allow businesses to understand the purchasing process, giving them insight into what drives customers toward purchase decisions so that they can tailor their strategies accordingly. But this is not just it. There are many other ways RevenueHero can help you ace your B2B sales funnel. Check them out below.

1. Streamline Bookings, Meetings with Prospects

RevenueHero can streamline booking meetings with prospects, enabling sales teams to quickly identify qualified leads and connect them with the appropriate representative. In addition, it provides instant scheduling, custom meeting distribution, account matching, and lead/meeting distribution features. This helps to reduce time wasted manually managing customers through the sales process and offers real-time insights for improved decision-making. 

2. Routing Analysis

RevenueHero's routing analysis feature allows sales reps to understand which channels perform best in driving new leads and nurturing existing customers. This helps teams to focus their efforts on those channels that are most likely to result in a successful outcome, saving time and money in the long run. 

3. Analytics and Metrics Tracking

RevenueHero also provides detailed analytics on customer conversion rates, enabling teams to track how well they turn prospects into paying customers. With data-driven insights like this, companies can make more informed decisions about their marketing strategies, improving their chances of success. 

4. Personalized Templates

RevenueHero's personalized templates help streamline communication between sales reps and prospects, ensuring that messages are consistent across all touch points throughout the customer journey. This improves the customer experience while reducing any potential confusion or frustration caused by inconsistent messaging from different representatives. 

5. Automated Dashboard

Finally, RevenueHero's meetings dashboard provides an overview of all current meetings booked, allowing managers to assign reps accordingly and ensure that every opportunity is addressed and noticed. This helps teams stay organized and maximize efficiency as they work towards closing deals with qualified leads.

Wrapping Up!

Mapping out the B2B customer journey successfully demands a thorough grasp of all your customers and how they engage with your brand and product. Adapting these steps to your consumers and business allows you to construct a customer journey map that identifies what your users require at each purchasing cycle to give them the greatest possible experience.