2. Page 1
We’ve long understood in
business-to-consumer (B2C)
industries that a positive service
experience provides competitive
advantage in customer acquisi-
tion and retention. Yet, customer
experience management is
emerging as a critical compo-
nent of success in business-to-
business (B2B) industries as well.
In fact, recent research reveals
that half of B2B firms’ top
executives say customer experi-
ence management is a competi-
tive differentiator and influences
major decision-making1.
Despite its importance, customer
experience management is just
emerging as a formal program
in most B2B companies. The
same research reports that just
20 percent of B2B companies
have implemented customer
experience management as a
formal business process and
only 28 percent of B2B execu-
tives base strategic decisions
on customer experience or
customer lifetime value2. And,
for many companies, investment
in customer experience manage-
ment is minimal—about half (48
percent) of B2B firms invest
less than one percent of annual
revenue in customer experience
management.
Indeed, B2B companies are
still getting acquainted with
customer experience manage-
ment. As executives are learning
how it differs from customer
satisfaction and relationship
management, investment is
increasing. Half of B2B organiza-
tions have increased investment
in customer experience manage-
ment over the past five years
and, rightly so3. For businesses
serving businesses, understand-
ing how to design and deliver
a superior customer experience
means competitive advantage.
These B2B findings are consis-
tent with Accenture’s own global
research on the growing impor-
tance of customer experience.
Consumer research Accenture
conducted in 2010 highlighted
that the bar for acceptable
service performance continues
to rise4. The research showed
that customer service expecta-
tions among consumers globally
are higher compared with just
12 months ago and consider-
ably higher than five years ago.
Indeed, for the first year since
Accenture began its annual
consumer research, customer
service became the top reason
(over price) that consumers
chose a new provider.
The research also confirmed the
consequences of poor service
performance are dire. In the past
year, two in three consumers
globally have switched the com-
pany from which they purchase
a product or service due to poor
customer service.
In today’s service environment, a
differentiated customer experi-
ence strategy clearly enhances
the brand. However, it also
allows a company to deliver a
premium service, where appropri-
ate, to top-tier customers while
maintaining the affordability of
the overall service experience.
Accenture’s research confirms
that companies can increase cus-
tomer retention, reduce support
costs, and grow their customer
base by providing such differenti-
ated treatment.
In this paper, we explore how a
business-to-business “customer
experience blueprint” can lay the
foundation for such differenti-
ated treatment by illuminat-
ing where premium service
opportunities exist and how to
capitalize on these opportunities
while maintaining an acceptable
overall cost to serve.
3. Page 2
Importance Doesn’t
Equal Action
Even as the importance of the cus-
tomer experience grows, B2B companies
continue to apply a uniform approach
to service across markets, customer
segments and types of customer inter-
actions. In fact, most B2B companies
provide a disparate and disaggregated
experience across the customer life-
cycle of marketing, sales and service.
For example, a company may fail to
integrate the service organization into
a new product introduction, resulting
in service professionals not knowing
of a product launch until receiving a
customer call to order or ask questions
about it. Similarly, sales and marketing
may create a bundled offer that is
simple and attractive to customers.
However service delivery is not bundled
in any way. Therefore, if the customer
has a service question or issue, he may
have to traverse separate service orga-
nizations for each product or service in
the bundle—not an optimal customer
service experience.
For most B2B companies, service is
traditionally thought of as a cost to serve
and, therefore, begs the question: how
good a service can a company afford to
provide within its service cost structure?
The answer usually is to spread service
across all customers equally, in a “one
size fits all” service model. We refer to
this phenomenon as the peanut butter
analogy: a company takes what it has in
terms of the service model and spreads
it across all customers equally. In such
a model, servicing a $5,000 order costs
the same as servicing a $5 million order.
Top-tier customers are offered the same
kind of experience as a customer who
generates only a fraction of that revenue
for the company. And when the spread-
ing of the peanut butter gets thin, the
experience of all customers diminishes.
4. Page 3
Mergers have further complicated
the issue. After all, it’s easier to have
one set of processes and responses
than several, and it’s typically faster
and cheaper to unify against a single
approach when bringing service orga-
nizations together after a merger.
But doing so often results in a poor
customer experience, a higher incidence
of unsatisfying outcomes for customers
and, ultimately, more customer turnover
and defection.
And, of course, there’s the issue
of bandwidth. In most companies,
customer service executives are busy
running day-to-day operations and
have little to no time to develop a
segmentation and treatment strategy if
one exists, to implement that strategy.
A segmented treatment strategy takes
time to design, implement, manage,
measure, and change the organization. It
simply won’t be a priority for a customer
service leader who is swamped daily by
escalations, service agent performance
problems, customers needing immedi-
ate resolution to critical problems and
internal meetings that consume large
chunks of his time. In other words, daily
operations often get in the way of doing
things right.
Accenture’s experience in helping
companies overcome the challenges of
customer experience implementation is
consistent with those found in recent
B2B customer experience research.
Overall, executives indicate that “a lack
of cross-organizational cooperation is
the greatest obstacle to customer expe-
rience management success, followed
by lack of customer experience strategy
and weak follow-through on customer
experience strategy; limited bandwidth
of managers and budget restrictions
have also inhibited CEM success5.”
The Challenge of
the Differentiated
Experience
So why haven’t companies tailored
and optimized service to meet the
needs and value of customers? To many
companies it might seem intuitive to
differentiate the service experience
based on the characteristics of different
customer segments. Yet actually doing
so is challenging.
It is difficult to know who should get
what service treatment because many
companies cannot determine the value
of different customers now versus in
the future—and, thus, are uncertain
into which segment customers fit. For
example, if there are high-value and
low-value customer segments, where
does a customer fit based on current
behavior but also future potential?
Even if a company knows the current
and future value of its customers, it can
be expensive, complex and challenging
to create tailored service levels for dif-
ferent customer segments. In most orga-
nizations, service is an afterthought.
Organizations are overwhelmed by what
the tailored service structure should
be and how to deliver a differentiated
experience. Often companies aren’t
equipped to tailor services because
they don’t have a customer experience
design, and haven’t done research and
analysis to tailor the experience to
customer wants and needs.
Making the Service
Experience Count
Despite these challenges, some leading
business-to-business enterprises are
moving aggressively toward providing a
tailored customer experience. Through
holistic customer experience design,
these companies are tailoring and opti-
mizing the service experience to mirror
the needs of customers and the value
of customers to their organization (see
one company’s experience in the sidebar
“The Customer Experience Blueprint in
Action”). Several of these companies
share a common characteristic: they
utilized a well-established, customer-
centric approach to customer experience
design and implementation. The founda-
tion for such a design is a customer
experience blueprint that:
• Considers premium service opportuni-
ties based on lifecycle management,
capabilities, and customer value.
• Meets the customer needs throughout
the lifecycle.
• Optimizes the experience through
appropriate channel management and
management of workforce.
• When implemented, allows the
company to deliver a premium service
where appropriate while managing,
and keeping affordable, the overall
cost to serve.
The approach used to create such a
design consists of three primary com-
ponents: global operating model review,
understanding customer needs and inten-
tions, and creation of the blueprint and
roadmap for implementation. We review
each component in greater detail below.
7. Page 6
model for all customer
segments, across all service
intentions and interaction
channels.
Based on the blueprint, the
company is now implementing a
competitively differentiated and
branded customer experience
across its customer care and
service operations. The roadmap
for implementation is aligned to
four overarching objectives:
• Enhancing the customer con-
tact experience with simpli-
fied points of entry and con-
sistent standards in customer
interactions.
• Shifting interactions to self-
service channels by improving
the online experience through
usability and prioritized inter-
actions and driving online
adoption.
• Differentiating customer
treatments across contact
handling, business process and
policies and interaction chan-
nels.
• Enabling sustainable improve-
ment by improving Voice of
the Customer and adopting a
holistic approach to customer
experience management.
While it is still too early in the
implementation to measure,
overall the company expects to
increase customer satisfaction
by two full percentage points—a
very significant improvement
in this industry. Furthermore,
through its efforts to improve
the online experience and
a multi-year push to move
The Customer
Experience Blueprint
in Action
A global telecommunications
product and service company
identified the need to transform
its customer operations to
provide a consistent and
differentiated service delivery
model that was competitive
across customer segments.
Using the approach outlined
elsewhere in this paper,
the company developed a
customer experience blueprint
that balanced outstanding
delivery with affordability
and was based on a strong
understanding of customer
needs and intentions.
The effort was quite complex,
as there were ten customer
segments across four lines of
business. The team identified
over 40 interaction types across
the customer lifecycle from
ordering, use and understanding,
to invoicing, support and
repair, and disconnection. These
interactions occur across six
channels (face-to-face, phone,
email, Web and chat, mobile
and collaboration). Identifying
“moments of truth” was quite
helpful to simplify and prioritize
this complex analysis. Based
on customer feedback, the
team identified multiple such
moments within the most
critical customer interactions.
The customer experience
blueprint that resulted from
this effort provided a treatment
more transactions online, the
company expects to save over
$100 million per year, at which
point more than 15 percent of
its total of 100 million annual
interactions will occur online.
Another key objective,
simplifying entry points,
involves reducing the number
of toll-free numbers through
which customers access the
company by almost 75 percent.
Not only will this initiative ease
customer navigation, it will
significantly reduce the overall
cost and resource required to
maintain toll-free lines.
Finally, in support of its
environmental responsibility
objective within this initiative,
the company will launch
a program to get business
customers to stop receiving
paper bills. As some business
customers receive hundreds
of pages of bills per month,
this effort will have significant
ecological impact while saving
the company tens of millions of
dollars per year.
10. Page 9
For many companies, environmental
responsibility is a top strategic objec-
tive. Global consumer research that
Accenture conducted in 2010 confirmed
that customers across industries are
also highly interested in environmental
responsibility8. The research reported
that having access to environmen-
tally friendly options was important or
extremely important to 56 percent of
survey respondents (up from 51 percent
the prior year). The customer experience
blueprint can be integral to furthering
sustainability objectives by, for instance,
moving the customers for whom environ-
mental responsibility is important from
paper bills to online bills. Such a move
also can create huge cost savings as B2B
customers often receive hundreds of
pages of paper bills each month.
Customer Experience by
Design or Default
Customer experience will occur by
design or default. Our experience in the
marketplace proves that a company
either intentionally enhances the brand
by designing and delivering a branded
and differentiated customer experience
or, by default, diminishes the brand
through a poor customer experience. In
other words, without a service experience
design to specifically enhance the brand,
customer interactions frequently result
in a customer experience that negatively
reflects on the company and its brand.
Only through holistic blueprint design
can a company achieve its collective cus-
tomer experience objectives and benefits.
In an era where B2B service is becoming
a significant differentiator and source
of customer acquisition and retention,
companies are compelled to create and
implement a global customer experience
blueprint that will further their pursuit of
high performance.
Reaping the Benefits
It is clear that while a customer experi-
ence blueprint is not easy to execute,
it can generate significant benefits for
companies—including superior customer
satisfaction and retention, environmental
responsibility, lower cost to serve, and a
better overall branded customer experi-
ence. Ultimately, these benefits translate
into greater market value. A recent study
conducted by Vanderbilt University
looked at the predictive value of quar-
terly customer satisfaction scores over a
10-year period. A portfolio of companies
whose American Customer Satisfaction
Index (ACSI) scores had risen over the
past year and were above the national
average far outperformed the market,
gaining an average value of 1.08 percent
per month. Over the 10-year period, the
portfolio more than tripled, gaining 212
percent while the Standard & Poor’s 500-
stock index rose 105 percent7.
From a detailed perspective, the customer
experience blueprint can drive the appro-
priate customer segments and service
interactions to less-expensive interaction
channels such as online self-service. It
can significantly improve service metrics
such as routing of contacts, average han-
dle times, and abandoned and dropped
calls— all of which increase customer
satisfaction. In addition, the strategy can
simplify the number of customer entry
points, which also can boost customer
satisfaction by easing navigation, but
also can reduce maintenance and support
cost for the business.
