Improve Ease of Doing Business for Lasting Customer Loyalty

The Gist

Customer frustrations persist. Many B2B customers experience frustration due to complex interactions with providers.
Importance of simplicity. Streamlining processes can significantly enhance the ease of doing business and lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Cross-department collaboration. Internal collaboration across departments is essential for identifying and resolving business challenges that impact customer experiences.

Throughout our careers in CX, nearly every B2B customer we’ve spoken to feels frustrated by their interactions with providers. Of course, some situations are worse than others, but this is a general condition, and it often eclipses other causes of dissatisfaction like product quality, pricing or delivery times.

We, as providers, put together business processes much like Dr. Frankenstein assembled his monster. A brain from here; a foot from there. It’s all interconnected and basically works as a single system, but it’s clunky, inefficient and scary as hell. Here come the angry mobs and torches.

With business transactions and processes, what should be simple becomes complex for many reasons. Modern businesses of all sizes have a variety of workflows that connect sales with marketing, finance, IT, HR, operations, engineering, professional services, customer success and more. Even worse, some organizations lack basic interconnectivity altogether.

It’s seldom the case that teams can come together and, with a blank sheet of paper, design a simple set of processes that cover front- and back-office operations completely and efficiently. Like the monster, all this is all-too-often assembled ad hoc (“yup, that ear is perfect for the left side, but what about this one for the right? He needs better hearing on that side”). Unlike the monster, processes are strung together over time (generally years), with varying (and conflicting) objectives in mind.

Remarkably, we have even seen this in startups and younger companies. Each department has its own perspective on the transactional triggers or decision-making data they need, and this is further complicated by the varying needs of different roles within a department. The sales rep is tracking the pipeline; the sales manager is tracking quotas; and sales ops is tracking bookings.

Customer Pain Points Impacting Ease of Doing Business

Considering the full spectrum of customers’ grievances concerning ease of doing business, the most significant issues are as follows:

Complex account management: Managing opportunities and accounts can become complicated due to various product categories, sales territories and the many roles involved in completing a sale. Institutional knowledge of the customer is often scattered and disconnected. Objectives and even language can vary greatly between departments. Differences in compensation models can massively compound these breakdowns, and customers suffer mightily.
Frustrating contracting processes: Contracting and order-taking should be quick and painless, but many conflicting factors often complicate this process. Legal compliance, compensation structures, insurance claims and capacity constraints can all create headaches.
Confusing handoffs: Poor handoffs between roles and departments can lead to confusion, especially when customer operations are affected by issues that arise. Even when it’s not our fault, how we react to these situations can either improve or erode customer satisfaction and loyalty, for better or worse.
Challenging frontline interactions: Interactions with frontline support, engineers or deployment experts can inadvertently cause more friction in the spirit of resolution. This experience only increases frustration, which drives dissatisfaction and causes confidence to erode.

There are certainly more examples that influence the ease of doing business, but these are the big offenders.

In B2C settings, there’s also no shortage of challenges like these. In that environment, complexity often wreaks havoc for customers in areas like digital engagement, customer support and returns/refunds.

What can we do to address these problems? Before we answer that, let’s discuss what priority to give them.

It’s important to note that while customer effort and ease of doing business are closely related, they aren’t exactly the same. Customer effort refers to how much energy a customer has to put into getting something done — like finding product information, placing an order or solving an issue. It focuses on the work they have to do during specific interactions.

Ease of doing business, on the other hand, looks at the bigger picture. It’s about how smooth the overall relationship is between a business and its customers across all interactions. Ease of doing business spans everything from sales and support to contract negotiation and delivery. When it’s easy to do business with a company, people don’t hit roadblocks at any point in their customer journey.

The Importance of Prioritizing Ease of Doing Business

Though ease of doing business and customer effort are subtly different, we can look at customer effort data to show the importance of minimizing high effort (thus maximizing the ease of doing business):

91% of consumers are likely to recommend a company after a positive, low-effort experience. [Source: SurveyMonkey]
High-effort experiences increase the likelihood of customer churn. 96% of customers going through a high-effort experience are likely to churn vs. only 9% for low-effort experiences. [Source: Gartner]
The cost to serve a customer decreases by 37% when the experience shifts from high effort to low effort. [Source: InMoment]

Before we go deeper, let’s pause and contemplate a critically important question: Would you prefer a customer who is willing to recommend your product for specific transactions, or would you prefer one who becomes a brand advocate, actively and enthusiastically promoting your brand on a broader scale?

The willingness to recommend — better known as the net promoter score (NPS) — is by its nature a passive assessment typically posed after an interaction. While it’s great to have a strong NPS, does that really help drive new revenue and customer retention?

So, what is the alternative, and how do we get there? Creating brand advocates means you’ll have an extended sales team composed of customers who are ready, willing and able to engage with you and for you. You’ll have an on-demand cadre of advocates who are enthusiastic participating in a case study or engaging in an advisory board.

This is what can be achieved by creating an enterprise experience focused on ease of doing business. Of course, there are other factors that influence advocacy, but minimizing effort and maximizing ease of doing business carries the day more often than not.

Looking back at one of our recent clients, a $15B office equipment manufacturer, we examined the most consequential customer feedback themes and delineated which themes were substantially about ease of doing business. As you can see, the majority of customer concerns related clearly to ease of doing business. In our experience, this is typical.

Every one of these themes took years, if not decades, to fully blossom. They are so core to the business but also so complex that you may want to put them on your “too hard to deal with” list. Doing so, though, would assure a slow, painful demise for the business. The monster can destroy the entire village if you let it.

So, what do we do next? There are a number of actions you can take to identify ease of doing business challenges, assess the full impact on the business and correct any problems. These actions will help you address your most significant challenges:

Internal Collaboration and Guidance

Talk to your team: Your employees know what’s broken. Sales reps, customer success managers and other frontline workers can quickly point out where things get complicated for customers. The simpler it is for your team to do their job, the simpler it will be for your customers to interact with you. Don’t guess; ask them directly.
Assemble a cross-functional team: Don’t tackle these issues alone. Bring together key people from different departments like sales, marketing, customer support and operations. This team will help validate what you’ve learned, set priorities and handle the heavy lifting on solutions. A cross-functional approach ensures everyone’s needs are considered, so you don’t create new problems while solving others.
Make sure you have the right tools: Give your team what they need to succeed. From basic communication tools to more advanced analytics, reporting and AI solutions, having the right technology in place is essential. These tools will help track progress, measure impact and even automate some of the more tedious processes that slow things down.

Executive and Business Alignment

Secure top-level executive sponsorship: You’re going to need support from leadership. Without executive buy-in, it’s hard to push through changes that cut across departments. Get top-level sponsorship from key functions like sales, operations and finance. This ensures you have the resources and authority to resolve conflicting priorities and make real progress.
Connect the dots between customer pain points and business metrics: Tie what your customers are experiencing to what your business cares most about — whether it’s revenue, margins, customer retention, new customers, customer satisfaction or efficiency. The entire leadership team is much more likely to support your efforts if you show how these pain points are hurting the business and its investors in some way. The clearer you make this connection, the easier it will be to gain backing.

Tactical Excellence and Communicating

Snag some early wins: Start small and pick a few quick wins to build momentum. Small improvements can have a big impact. These wins show progress and help build buy-in from both employees and leadership.
Work with marketing to communicate successes and challenges: Keep everyone in the loop, including employees, leadership and key stakeholders. Marketing can help you build an internal campaign to highlight both your successes and challenges. Yes, you should talk about the tough spots, too. Being open about where you’re struggling helps people understand the complexity of the task and keeps them engaged. It also builds empathy, and a little empathy can go a long way.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: Progress is more important than perfection. Small, steady improvements will add up over time. Don’t wait for the perfect solution to every problem. Focus on making things a little easier day by day, and over time, these gains will compound into big improvements.
Start with specific projects: Choose a specific issue to tackle first. Connect the dots between what employees and customers find frustrating and the strategic, operational or financial goals of your business. When you tie improvements to clear business outcomes, it’s easier to justify the work and measure success.

“You’d better build ease of doing business into your master plan,” said Ruth Veloria, chief strategy and customer officer for the University of Phoenix. “As crucial as ease of doing business is, it can be tricky to prioritize a new project in the face of all the work you previously prioritized. Those other projects already in motion will have revenue and other benefits attached. And resources are always scarce. You’ll need a strong business case.”

Fostering a Culture of Seamless Interactions

While the concept of ease of doing business may seem straightforward, the reality of achieving it is far more complex. It involves a deep understanding of both internal processes and customer pain points. However, the significance of addressing these challenges cannot be overstated. By fostering internal collaboration, securing executive buy-in and focusing on tactical wins, businesses can gradually dismantle the barriers that hinder their operations.

This is a journey that requires patience, persistence and a commitment to continual improvement. But the rewards — in terms of customer loyalty, satisfaction and overall business success — are well worth the effort. And you’ll be able to mobilize your village of employees and customers to slay the monster!

Learn how you can join our contributor community.

This post was originally published on here