A study on Customer Centricity in B2B — Part 1: Fictions, myths and why is it important anyway?
By: Eduardo De Carvalho
Tags: Customer Service, Digital Transformation, B2B

A study on Customer Centricity in B2B — Part 1: Fictions, myths and why is it important anyway? Eduardo de Carvalho Mar 19·5 min read

Find here this article in Portuguese // Encontre aqui este artigo em Português.

The study

In this study, we will talk about customer centricity. A much debated subject when we speak of B2C, but not much relatable when we talk about B2B enterprises.

We will challenge the notion that Customer Centricity is only important in B2C relationships, and talk about how much more is there to learn and improve, when we take a Customer Centricity approach to B2B.

In this first part of the study "Fictions, myths and why it is important anyway?", we will talk a little bit about some fictions and myths we still believe in every day of our lives and dive a little deeper into why we think it is important to have a Customer Centricity approach to B2B as well as B2C.

In part 2, I will share some hypothesis on why we think the notion that B2B must be Customer Centric is so odd, even these days, and why so many companies still lack the capabilities (and sometimes the intent) to overcome that.

In part 3, I will introduce a new concept called Customer Centricity Spectrum, and discuss why I think it is a good tool to help business leaders tackle challenges associated to shifting a culture of a B2B company towards a more Customer Centric approach.

And in part 4 we will conclude the study by discussing how hard it is to keep this approach, and why entropy will lead to things becoming more and more not-Customer Centric, unless leaders act, and keep on acting again.

The fictions that we believe in everyday

"Companies" do not use mobile apps or e-commerce sites, only people do. Right? Wrong! And I can explain it.

We can all agree that companies are just made-up things that exists only in our collective imagination. At first it may be challenging to think about that, because companies are such part of our every day lives, that we forget, that in the in the natural world there is no such thing as a company. That is the material truth. A company is just a fiction. A very elaborated fiction, but nonetheless a fiction.

As Yuval Noah Harari puts brilliantly in his book Sapiens (you can find the part around companies, here), companies are fiction, myths that helps us collaborate more effectively than any other invention in Human History. And we can also agree on another thing: Companies do not do anything — People do.

So, with that in mind one can also reflect and realize that, since companies will not actually do anything, there is no need for customer centricity and customer experience in B2B relationships. But that conclusion, although very common in most enterprises, can be quite wrong. That is, because people do everything in the name of their companies, and if they have a bad experience, in any given situation, your business will be in trouble.

Why is customer centricity in B2B important?

According to a 2019 study by Gallup, B2B customers are more likely to engage with a company again when they had a good experience when dealing with problems, even more than engaging again with a company if they did not have a problem at all. That shows us that the ability to handle problems in a timely manner is most important than trying the impossible of making sure there is never going to be a problem.

Also, imagine the following scenario:

You are on your home, working remotely, and you want to buy a new mouse. You have searched the internet, read a lot of reviews about different kinds of mouse, and now you know the one you really want to buy. You go to amazon.com, a B2C e-commerce platform, find the mouse and buys it with one-click feature. It is already billed to your credit card, and turns out you will receive that mouse today! Now you close amazon.com website, and you start working. You work as a buyer for a global company, and you need to buy 100 mouses, as request by the IT Team. You know you are about to enter a living nightmare. Your company cannot just buy from Amazon, you have to buy from some other B2B global partner that your company has selected. You open their website, and it is slow. You have a hard time finding the right model. It is not pleasant to navigate. Informations are scrambled. You are not sure if they have all the 100 mouses you need, because it lacks the stock quantity on screen, and when you try to complete the purchase, you receive a message stating that there is no stock for the whole purchase, but it does not even tell you how many mouses are in-stock.

Well, that scenario might be a little exaggerated. Or is it? Turns out the global market for e-commerce business is larger for B2B companies, in situations just like the one above, or even worse.

But how large is the global e-commerce B2B market is compared to the B2C e-commerce we know and love? Well, a lot. And I mean, a lot! Check the figures out:

As we can see from the graphic above, the global market for B2B e-commerce is more than 500% larger than the B2C market, worth 21 Trillion US Dollars. So we can imagine the hypothetical situation above or any other analogous one is happening right now in your B2B company.

My short take on it

Overall, B2B companies in all industries are in great need to reshape its organisational structure, culture and practices, in order to put its clients and customers at the center of all decisions and behaviours. At every interaction between two companies, there are individuals representing these companies, and the better you can understand these companies needs and these individuals expectations, the more you will be remembered as a great partner.

Tune in a fortnight to check on the next parts of the article!