Seth Godin recently blogged about the challenge that companies face as they scale their businesses and try to maintain a level of intimate touch that existed when the company was much smaller. Inevitably, scaling your business results in less time to focus on customized client contact. This is very true in B2C businesses, but our work building client experience strategies and programs has proven that this does not hold true for B2B companies.
The problem that Godin identifies is that as the client numbers scale we can’t comparably scale the time we have to spend on each client challenge. This is true if you look to scale deep client engagement across all of your clients – but why would you choose to treat all clients the same? Most B2B companies know that 10-20% of their client base contributes 80% or more of revenue. They also know that they cannot afford to lose this 10-20% of clients.
The challenge in scaling client experience programs is when the number of clients involved in the program are too many for your organization to make meaningful connections. By considering a strong segmentation and preparing to treat your most important customers with high touch, companies are able to provide the level of contact that enables a differentiated client experience. How are you scaling your client experience program? Where have you experienced challenges?