Business To Business Core Customer Metrics

The Corporate Executive Board recently studied Customer Loyalty from a business to business perspective.  One of the major conclusions is that, in many cases, switching business to business suppliers is so hard to do, the fact that a customer is buying from you (behavioral loyalty) doesn’t mean they are emotionally invested in that behavior.  Also, purchase decisions are generally shared among multiple people, and still more people are internal influences.

While not shocking or surprising, it is true that much less to do is made about building loyalty among business to business customers than among business to consumer customers.

Thinking through some of the core measures that are prevalent today, most seem to be not especially well-suited for B2B applications.  For instance, the much discussed Net Promoter Score relies upon the the predisposition of loyal customers to want to recommend the companies they like.  While it makes sense for cars, audio equipment, movies etc., I’m not sure that physicists go to cocktail parties and talk about what brand of test equipment they’re using.  Or maybe they do, and that’s why I’ve never seen a physicist at a cocktail party.

The article raises some interesting nuances worth thinking about.  For instance, B2B surveys that focus on the end-user in the company are more predictive of loyalty than are those that focus on decision-makers.  While this may seem simplistic, most B2C surveys focus on the household decision maker’s attitudes (e.g., Dad buys the soap) rather than the users (e.g., everyone in the house uses the soap).

Apparently there is no magic bullet available for B2B companies, just as there isn’t one for B2C.  The most important distinguishing characteristic between successful and less successful companies will be the PROCESS they went through to arrive at their core customer metric — not the metric itself.

What B2B loyalty metrics do you think are most effective for a particular company or industry and why?