MC: 0:00

Experience Action. Let's stop just talking about customer experience, employee experience and the experience of leaders. Let's turn ideas into action. Your host, jeanne Walters, is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a strategic consulting firm helping companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences. Ready set action.

Jeannie Walters: 0:31

It's the Experience Action Podcast. I am here to answer your questions. We have a great one from all the way across the globe in the land down under.

Listener Question: 0:43

Hi Jeannie, Peter from the Gold Coast Australia. My question is how can a B2B supplier with a great customer experience strategy ensure that their retail partner staff are equally engaged in a customer experience strategy?

Jeannie Walters: 0:57

This is an excellent question, Peter, and let me start by saying first of all, I'm so excited when people ask me questions about strategy as it relates to customer experience, because too many organizations simply overlook the strategy of this. We are all putting in the effort every day so that we get better outcomes for our organizations. So the fact that you have a strong customer experience strategy, I didn't want to overlook that, so congratulations on that. Now the first thing I'd recommend here and this is something that I see a lot in B2B you might have resellers, you might have authorized dealers, you might have franchises, and when those things happen, when you have that distribution network that isn't necessarily accountable to you in the centralized idea of an organization, it can get a little sticky. So here are a few things that I've seen that have worked in this particular scenario. So the first is really having that shared vision and goals and sometimes, even if we can't mandate it, even if we can't say this is the way we're going to do it, sharing our vision for the customer experience, really getting specific on the outcomes that we're looking for around the customer experience can be super helpful in just aligning what we're trying to do. Now, when I work with organizations, this is one of the first things we talk about is how do we align within the organization to have that strong mission and that strong strategy, and so sharing that, being very transparent and visible about that can really help your B2B partners understand what you're trying to do and make sure that they feel more aligned with it. So the CX outcomes here benefit both of you as well, and so making sure that you describe it as not just what's in it for you, but what's in it for them, that will be something that will drive success and accountability. Now, hand in hand with that comes really crystal clear communication and training. So this is where you can offer value to your partners by saying, hey, we are going to come in and have a special training for you, we'll bring donuts or whatever the equivalent is, and you can offer things like that to really provide what feels like extra value. But it's really a win-win for everybody, because the more you can train on your strategy, the more you can communicate about it, the more that alignment will happen.

Jeannie Walters: 3:36

So it's really important here not just to focus on selling. I've seen this a lot, where people say we're going to offer you all this great training and they come in and they just kind of talk about selling their product or how to sell, and what we're talking about is the customer experience. So make sure they understand that this is something that maybe is not just about what they sell for you and the products that they carry for you, but it could be for their business overall. So, again, you want to paint everything as that win-win, because that's what it is. It's really a win for your organization if they get better at this, and it's also a win for them because they're going to see better results as a business and then, ultimately, your customers will feel that as well. So it really is something that you can make sure that you're including them so that they get better results. This ties a little bit back to how we recognize our partners and the individuals who work there.

Jeannie Walters: 4:35

I see a lot of recognition and rewards and incentive programs that are built in the B2B space all around selling, and if we only focus on that, then we are saying to them that is our priority. Now, selling is incredibly important. We need people to buy our products and services, but if we have certain standards around the customer experience that we want them to live up to creating an incentive program around that can be really powerful. Now, the only way to really achieve this is if you have strong feedback metrics or you are able to have visibility into operational metrics or purchase cycles, or things like that, to really make sure that you're rewarding the right behavior. But you can absolutely build incentive and recognition programs around customer experience so that they feel like they're really rewarded, frankly, for behaving in the way you want them to behave and delivering that experience in the way that is most important to your vision and your strategy, if you have a close relationship with your partners, if you have things that you agree are kind of joint key performance indicators or OKRs, then you might want to look at how can we include customer experience as one of those joint KPIs. That can be another very powerful way to really assign some accountability to this, to make sure that people realize this is a real thing. This is not something we just talk about and we say, please do this, we hope you do this, and then we don't talk about it again until we come back in the next year and go through our training.

Jeannie Walters: 6:19

We want to make sure this is that drumbeat of communication around customer experience and why it's so important to our businesses, not just to our customers. And then, of course, you need to have constant communication check-ins, you need to have feedback loops. You need to have those tools in place, not just with your customers but also with your partners, so that you can understand. Where are they having challenges? What can we do to help their experience improve as well? So this is really about fostering a collaborative approach so that we can get the best rewards for everybody involved.

Jeannie Walters: 6:59

So this is one of those times I say it is a win, win, win. It's a win for your organization, it's a win for your partners and, ultimately, it's a win for the customers you serve. So I hope that this inspires you to take a little action. I would love to hear what happens. So please keep in touch and let us know. How did you move that forward with your B2B partners? Were you able to really foster that collaboration and co-create this amazing customer experience for those that you serve? What a great question.

Jeannie Walters: 7:33

Thank you, everybody out there who is, day in, day out, working on behalf of your customers. I just know that your praises are not sung enough, so consider them sung here. You are a hero for what you do, and it's really important that, as CX leaders, we continue to articulate that. We define what success looks like and then we lead around that. So keep fighting the good fight out there. Keep throwing these questions my way. Don't forget, you can always leave me a voicemail at askjeannievip and check out our site at Experience Investigators for more resources, and I just released two more LinkedIn Learning courses, all about operationalizing CX and the value chain around customer experience. I would love for you to check those out on LinkedIn Learning as well. Can't wait to talk to you again, and thanks again for being here at the Experience Action Podcast. To learn more about our strategic approach to experience. Check out free resources at experienceinvestigatorscom where you can sign up for our newsletter, our year of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie Walters, on LinkedIn.