How to create a 


winning B2B customer 


experience strategy 

in 4 steps
Guidance & tools 


to help you 


build a vision 


backed by a solid 

An acceleration in the use of 


business case B2B digital channels during 


the COVID-19 pandemic.




Big change is afoot in the business-to-

business world. Digital leaders across

Changing customer demographics 


manufacturing, wholesale and distribution

and elevated expectations.




are increasingly looking to customer

experience innovation as a route to realise

bold commercial ambitions, driven by a

Recognition that digital channels 


number of overarching market trends:

can drive growth throughout the

customer base – from key accounts

to the ‘long tail’ – and reduce costs

by enabling greater self-service.




The increasing threat of disruption 


and the rise of Amazon Business.

1
It is an exciting time in which
the potential to realise 

step-change growth by
delivering digital experiences
that closely align with customer
needs and priorities is driving
new thinking and encouraging
an increasing number of digital
leaders from business-to-
consumer (B2C) to make the
move to B2B.
But it doesn’t have to be 

that way


Although B2B and B2C are very different
beasts, it is possible to adapt well-worn
principles and processes from B2C to help
overcome these barriers – gathering the
insight and evidence required to build a
winning B2B experience strategy backed 

by a compelling business case.

The truth is that there are real barriers to

customer experience innovation in B2B: That is what this toolkit sets out to do. 

Complex customer journeys make it hard to It provides B2B digital leaders with the 

know where to start, quantify the bottom line insight and practical tools required to get
value of innovation and build a compelling started, while bringing structure and order to
business case for investment.
a customer experience innovation process 

that can otherwise seem opaque and elusive.

2
Table of 


contents


Get under the skin of 


01 your customers

map your customers’ 


02 end-to-end journeys

Identify opportunities

03 for innovation and

improvement

Prioritise and validate -

04 feasible, desirable,

measurable

05 Next steps

3
 More often than
not, the great
four Steps to 
 unknown in that
a Winning B2B equation is 

Customer the customer 


Experience 
 Who are they? 



What are their priorities? 



Strategy What is it really like to engage with 

the business? 



It is important to remember that every B2B How well are we meeting their needs? 


organisation has its own challenges and
How well does the buying experience fit 

priorities, and serves a distinct customer 
 with their wider purchase journey? 


base with its own needs and motivations. 


Where are the moments of pain and joy? 


So, when it comes to customer experience
How does engaging with us make them feel?
design, there is no one-size-fits all solution. 

The right approach will always balance the
specific needs of customers with the
commercial ambitions of the business.

4
01
Customer Research

Getting under the skin of customers
to understand their needs (both
practical and emotional), frustrations
02
and demands - in the context of a Mapping The 

customer journey that extends well
outside of their interaction with 

Customer Journey

the business. Documenting the journey prescribed
by existing digital channels,
understanding how well it aligns
with customers’ wider journeys,
identifying points of pain and
This toolkit sets out a logical, 
 underserved needs.
step-by-step approach that is
proven to help answer those
questions

04 03
Identifying
Prioritising & 
 opportunities for
Validating improvement &
Opportunities 
 innovation

Assessing opportunities and Translating customer insight to
potential solutions according to
focus down on specific
their desirability, viability, customer
opportunities to satisfy unmet
response and commercial
outcomes – to build a roadmap needs, address points of pain in the
drawing out quick wins, medium existing customer experience and
term opportunities and longer 
 engage customers on a human,
term ambitions. emotional level.

5
 Budget 

Engaging with Holders

customers 

 Specifiers

to understand their needs,

motivations and priorities is 

the crucial starting point – 

Personas
and this can be achieved
through a well-designed
programme of customer
interviews. 
Buyers
That design process begins with careful
consideration of customer types and the
personas within them. In key account Users / 

customers, personas can span multiple 
 Influencers
roles with their own needs and priorities,
typically including budget holders, budget
holders, specifiers, buyers, users &
influencers.
Meanwhile in smaller, long tail customers 

a single customer persona might take on 

all these roles, albeit with similar needs 

and priorities.

This complexity means it is very important 


to decide which customer types and

Step 1
personas to explore through research – 

and here a discovery workshop involving 

key stakeholders can be vital to identifying
priority customer types and personas, for
instance according to commercial ambitions.

get under the skin

Equally, internal customers – like sales

of your customers agents and account managers – represent 


a crucial source of insight since they interact
with digital channels and tools far more
regularly than individual customers.

6
Draw on 

existing data 


Much can be learned from your existing data
and customer insight, and this can play an
important role in focusing customer
interviews and research where it 

matters most.

Look at data from analytics and customer

intelligence systems, as well as any 

pre-existing customer research to identify
potential problem areas in the existing
customer experience and make sure they are
included in your customer interview planning.

However, beware of an over-reliance on data

as this can also narrow the focus too far. It is
important to strike the right balance between
investigating known issues and gathering the
broader insight you need to build a customer
experience vision tied to wider customer
needs and motivations.

7
Plan your
research 


First of all, it is important to
realise that gathering the 

insight you need does not 

mean interviewing hundreds 

of customers. 



This is qualitative research, in which

interviewing five respondents per customer
Who are our customers and what 

persona (including internal customers) has are they seeking to achieve?

been proven to be the optimum approach

from a cost-benefit point of view. 1 This will Who are the key actors and what 

provide around 80% of the insight you need, are their roles?

which is more than sufficient, particularly if What problem are they trying to 

you are able to include new customers who solve - what’s the trigger?

have not yet ‘learned’ your systems in 


your research.
What are their needs when they 

are triggered into action? 


What matters most is shaping interviews to
gather the right insight because a superficial How and when do they interact with 

understanding of customers isn’t enough. 
 our digital channels in the context 

It is essential to achieve an understanding of of their day to day? 


their needs at a human level - not just what
they need to do to get their work done, but What problems do they and frustrations 

how interacting with your digital channels 
 they experience along the way?


fits with their day-to-day work, demands 

from customers and colleagues, and how 
 What are the deeper needs - 

the purchase experience makes them feel. beyond reliability and convenience – 

which we can meet in delivering a

more meaningful customer experience?

1
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/

8
 Difficulties they 

encounter along the way

Moments of joy 

& discomfort

Evidence of 

workarounds
Engaging with
customers 


Sources of ideas Understand where and why
& inspiration customer needs emerge in 

the customer journey.



Customer journey mapping is the next step. 


It will help to organise your insight so you can
instantly see where and why customer needs
emerge, how well they are being met, and

Step 2
where there are opportunities to satisfy
previously unmet needs – both practical 

and emotional.

Map your customers’

end-to-end journeys

9
Start the Process of
customer journey
mapping by 


Documenting the customer journey
prescribed by your digital channels – 

how does the customer experience
currently work in practice?




Drawing on your customer insight to map

out the real world, end-to-end journeys
customers take, the interactions, pressures,
priorities and needs that emerge along the
Considering the journeys that 

way, and the points at which they intersect
different customer types may take 

with your digital channels - bear in mind
when interacting with the business - 

here that many aspects of these journeys
for instance assisted journeys for key 

will not be digital at all.

accounts, self-service journeys for 


smaller customers - as well as those
typically undertaken by different 

persona and new customers.




Comparing these journeys with that

prescribed by your digital channels 

to understand how well your existing 

customer journey fits with those wider
working patterns and how well you 

are meeting their practical and 

emotional needs.  

10
 So, having identified areas of friction and
opportunity in customer journeys, and How can we fix moments 

understanding customer needs, how do you Practical of pain and frustration, to
come up with the innovations that will make make engaging with us
the biggest difference?
easy and convenient?

How do you come up with the

innovations that will make 

the biggest difference?

How can we go beyond 


the practical, to make the Emotional
experience valuable and
enjoyable?

Naturally, there is no single answer, since the

right approach will depend on your B2B
proposition and the needs of your customers
– though two interrelated themes are likely 

to emerge:

Step 3
At this stage, provided you remain guided by
insight, there are no wrong answers – it is more
important to be ambitious than worry about what
is viable. The goal here is simply to identify
solutions by asking ‘how might we?’.

Identify opportunities for Those ideas do not have to be conjured from thin
air. There are some well-established techniques
innovation and improvement
and sources of inspiration that can be very
helpful when it comes to those 

‘how might we?’ questions.

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They Include



02
Taking inspiration from other
industries – engage with peers in

01
other industries. What are they
doing well that you could adapt in
order to better meet your own
customers’ needs?
Looking at competitors: - where
possible given the prevalence of 

log-in walls, look at competitors to
assess how your customer
experience compares. 



Can you take inspiration in areas

where they are outperforming, or
differentiate in areas where they 

fall short?


03
Thinking beyond buyers 

what can you do to better 

engage specifiers, users 

and influencers in the 

purchase chain?

12
04
Learning from complementary
product vendors – how does your
customer experience compare with
other vendors, whose products are
used before, alongside or after
yours? 



Can you draw inspiration from

specific elements of the customer
journeys and experiences
orchestrated by these brands?

05
Focusing on emotional appeal –
how can you elevate functional,
utilitarian experiences by tapping
into customer emotions?

06
Identifying trends that matter – seek
to identify trends that are likely to be
decisive in your industry and which
have clear trajectories, then think
about how your own B2B customer
experience can benefit from
engaging with them.

13
 This Final Stage
is the most
important 

 Think of this process as passing all
transforming a shopping list of
ideas into an organised, viable
experience strategy tied to
measurable commercial
outcomes.
What follows is a process of filtering,
prioritising and validating, to arrive at a
manageable, realistic and commercially
valuable selection of actions divided
according to quick wins, medium term
opportunities and longer term ambitions.
Step 4
Prioritise & Validate -
feasible, desirable,
measurable 
 take to get a return on investment?
14


your ideas through a series of ever finer
sieves, progressively whittling down the
list by asking:


Is this a realistic ambition? Does it fit 

with the business’ overall strategy 

and growth ambitions.


How urgent is it? Does it address an
issue that directly impacts sales and
customer satisfaction.


What does the data tell you? Analytics
and existing customer intelligence can
be very helpful when it comes to
prioritising ideas and solutions – by
providing a clear view of the impact of
the underlying issues they 

seek to address.
Do we have the technology, people and
processes to deliver and support this,
over what timescale and at what cost?


How will customers respond? Go back
to your customer base with basic,
sketched out ideas to assess the likely
impact.


Can we ascribe a bottom line benefit? 

– for instance, a 20% reduction in
helpdesk calls – and how long will it





Be ruthless, this
is not about
doing everything
at once 



The beginning of a journey of constant
improvement in which the success of early
innovations is crucial to gaining the buy-in set The 

you need to drive an iterative, step-by-step
transformation of the customer experience – Business Case 


so discard any ideas that you cannot back
with solid validation or tie to a clear 
 The final challenge, with the four steps
customer need.

 completed, is to translate all this work into a
clear strategy and compelling business case. 

Throughout this process, your goal is to build

The key mindset shift here is to move away
a roadmap for improvement that balances
from long term, multi-million transformation
customer needs with commercial ambition,
projects and instead propose a more agile
drawing out quick wins, medium term
approach based on rapid prototyping, testing
opportunities and longer term ambitions –
and iterative improvement – and which
the basis for your customer experience
focuses on ‘quick win’ priority issues and
strategy and business case.
opportunities first.

In fact, these quick wins should form a crucial

element of your customer experience
strategy. Even though they may well focus on
seemingly ‘basic’ aspects of the customer
experience - from password management to
search - addressing these priority issues can
deliver real change and measurable
commercial outcomes in a matter of weeks,
not months or years, and in turn strengthen
the case for further action.

15
With that in mind 

your business
case should 


Communicate your overarching vision for the
customer experience - rooted in customers’
practical and emotional needs.



Make the case for change, clearly drawing 


out commercials and demonstrating its
contribution to growth ambitions.



Set out a roadmap based on realistic

timelines, starting with quick wins as
validators for further investment.

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 Next steps:


making your vision 


a reality


The 


four step 


process 


Outlined is your roadmap to a winning 


B2B customer experience strategy, and a

programme of innovation you can implement

with confidence, because it is built on genuine

and detailed insight around the needs and

motivations of real customers.

Transform the 


experience

Of course, the next step is to make your vision

a reality - bringing it off the page to drive

growth by transforming the experience for

for customers
customers. Crucially, however, actually

delivering experience innovation is not an

unmanageable ‘big bang’ process.

17
To connect with your peers, join


The B2B Experience - the LinkedIn 


group for digital leaders in B2B.

Scan QR code to join

info@biglight.co.uk

www.biglight.co.uk