Why do so many B2B organizations neglect customer experience design?

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Hello Spark reader,

This week we have a follow on to our interview with Jeanette Juetten, Vivace’s Managing Director and expert in all things User Experience. She and Spark Editor Mimi continued their conversation, chatting about why being intentional with your customer experience is the key to winning customers and building brand loyalty in B2B, and how we’re incorporating this into every aspect of strategy as part of ‘the Vivace way’.

This edition is also sponsored by Women in Brand, a network with a mission to amplify, celebrate, and progress the work of women in brand marketing, strategy, and design, which we are very proud to support. If this sounds like you, find out how to get involved below.

-joel

Why UX and CX are the key to winning in B2B markets

In conversation with Jeanette Juetten

More than a decade ago, design thinking and its applications like customer and user experience, or service design, was being spoken about as the next big business differentiator and advantage – lead by innovators like IDEO, Frog Design, Fjord and others, many of which were ultimately gobbled up by the big consulting firms. But we have yet to see large-scale, org-wide adoption of CX or user-centred design principles in b2b.

Jeanette and I met a few weeks ago to discuss her special interest in UX, how it has been woven throughout her career and now at Vivace.

Mimi: What has been your experience of the difference in experience design focus and appetite between b2b and b2c organisations?

Jeanette: At American Girl, my career in digital included the discipline of user interface (UI) design, but the whole company had a strong market-research focus, running a lot of customer focus groups and other types of research. So my time there had me laser-focused on the customer experience from the beginning. Every time you picked up a catalog, every time you visited the website, every time you received an email, every time you placed a phone order, and how they were all connected – all of those touch-points were carefully considered. 

Thomson Reuters was ahead of its time in that it had an entire in-house team within the centralized Global Creative Services division that focused on user experience – that was quite a unique proposition for b2b around ten years ago.

Ecolab, which is a really strong, reputable brand in their space, had yet to hire a single dedicated UI or UX person when I joined in 2019, but the aim of the customer portal and E-commerce initiative that I worked on was to bring in those b2c experiences and optimise them for b2b.

M: We have both had similar experiences in that we’ve seen varying levels of attention (and budget!) for this across the board and we’ve both come to the conclusion that there’s a huge gap in potential – because it's still not being done to a high level consistently in most b2b organisations.

When you look at Vivace’s clients at the moment, how are they approaching this? Is there an appetite for, or a focus on, improving customer experiences or using user-centered design? 

J: We’ve been working closely with one of our clients on their rebrand and they did a lot of research with stakeholders on their brand platform. I was fortunate enough to be part of some of those conversations last year and we gained huge value and insight.

The process of working with stakeholders in the refinement of the tagline was fascinating. Initially there was a lot of internal discussion as to the pros and cons of each one, but we decided to select three options and take them to stakeholders – we spoke to approximately 15-20 over the course of time. What we found was that what resonated with one didn't always resonate with another, and their feedback led us to completely pivot from any of those three to a completely new tagline. 

That to me is why user experience and customer research and insight are so valuable; understanding how things resonate with your customers as you go. If we had gone with any of the other taglines, it would have landed for some but alienated others. Testing and evolving it enabled us to come up with an even better outcome.

M: There is a lot of value in incorporating customer feedback at every stage of the delivery or creative process, and iterating, rather than waiting until there’s something quite polished and ‘finished’ that is tested, but it’s not something that a lot of companies would consider by default as part of their brand strategy.

How can companies think about incorporating customer research into their brand and marketing strategy?

J: The previous rebrand example demonstrates how good customer insight can evolve your brand and make you more relevant to the people that you want to be relevant with, by incorporating your target audience into the process. It’s a great example of better understanding users for our clients to create and evolve their brands and brand assets.

I also loved one of the projects I did with the previous agency I worked for to develop pet food branding. We did a customer survey and broadened it to include people that have backyard pets such as chickens, goats, etc., where they weren’t a primary source of income, and we discovered such a wide variety of concerns and that every single owner was different. 

Being able to tap into that data and bucket things in the customer’s words allowed the brand to then use that language in their future marketing and brand positioning. This helps to build brand loyalty and really resonate with the people that you're trying to connect with or sell to, whatever that looks like for your brand.

M: Customer or user research is obviously one of your special interests and areas of expertise. What can we expect to see from you and Vivace in this area in the future?

J: At the previous agency I was working at I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to really hone my skills with a University Professor who specializes in the communications and research space. 

It was great to be able to work closely with him on research projects using focus groups and surveys, all things that I had done previously, but getting to work on customer research exclusively really helped to refresh and perfect my knowledge in this space.

I'm super excited and passionate about the ability to do more customer outreach conversations around research and expand that element of the Vivace offering.

Jeanette’s essential tips for creating great experiences

Vivace is proud to support Women in Brand, a group that exists to amplify, celebrate, and progress the work of women in brand marketing, strategy, and design. If this sounds like you, or something you believe in—join us! You can find their community on:

LinkedIn | Instagram | Substack 

Check out their free online panel event coming up in support of International Women’s Day and in partnership with York International Women’s Week, where they will be discussing ‘how to build a fairer branding world for women’. Register here.

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs and strong opinions to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace, a global B2B creative studio and consultancy that helps businesses drive meaningful brand and commercial impact. Get in touch if you’d like to chat with any of the team. Have a great week ahead.