Delivering an
inspirational
B2B experience
Inspired, B2B
Confronting your three
biggest challenges to
change head-on
Start with
brilliant basics
The insights gained from Wunderman Thompson’s Inspire database prove
inspiration drives growth for B2B brands as much as B2C. Inspiring B2B brands
outperform the market in demand generation, price elasticity, and conversion.
Inspired B2B brands grow by making emotional connections through better
experiences. Today’s buying groups expect intuitive service, accelerated digital
journeys, and for every interaction to coalesce effortlessly around their needs.
Yet many B2B experiences struggle to deliver on the basics, let alone inspire buyers
to invest in deeper and more valuable relationships. Future growth will be unlocked
by those who meet these new demands, while customer retention will decline for
those who won’t.
Review, regroup, rethink
In this article, we look at why B2B companies wanting to inspire and grow need
to rethink their customer experience and reassess what buyers are looking for.
Additionally, we provide inspiration for how organisations can overcome three of
the biggest challenges when looking to close the gap between expectation and
experience.
57% of B2B purchases will be
online in 5 years’ time.
51% of global B2B buyers
say that B2B sellers don’t
understand the friction
points in the online buying
experience.
The number one source of inspiration
for both general product buyers and raw
materials buyers is the supplier’s website
and mobile site.
Source: Wunderman Thompson, B2B Shopper Report, 2023
The three challenges
of transforming digital
experiences
What’s hampering B2B brands trying to deliver inspiring customer-centric
experiences? It’s generally not a lack of vision – ambitious brands have
bucketloads. It’s usually something more prosaic; establishing the foundations
to bring that vision to life.
These can only be built with the right combination of people, process, data, and
technology. Empowered employees, seamless processes, centralised customer
data, and integrated systems accelerate transformational change. However,
entrenched organisational siloes and disparate technologies can halt progress.
Overcoming these barriers is a tough ask, but not insurmountable.
Next, we’ll take a closer look at the three challenges to creating Inspired B2B
customer experiences, and the opportunities they present.
Challenge 1
The pace of change can
be slow and painful
Fragmented digital estates, legacy technology stacks, disparate teams, and
cultural challenges result in 70% of digital transformation projects failing (BCG).
If the programme isn’t aligned with the organisational climate or doesn’t release
value back to the business quickly enough, it’s unlikely to succeed.
Opportunity
Close the cultural and technological
enablement gap from day one
Creating a culture that’s open to rapid, incremental
changes is essential for a major transformation. It is
vital to establish a supportive environment from the
get-go – and build on it throughout the programme’s
lifecycle. Focussing on quick wins can rapidly release
value back to the business, and these achievements
can be socialised across your business to galvanise
the community around the vision.
At the same time, you need to build the sustainable
technical foundations to provide the scalability,
performance, and functionality for now, and the
future. For example, composable commerce
architectures bring together best-of-breed
solutions in an integrated ecosystem that delivers
personalised experiences for every customer. It
improves the speed and efficiency of transactions by
reducing friction at every touchpoint.
With the right culture and technology in place from
the start, you can generate the agility and resilience
you need to maintain momentum over the long term.
It’s hard for B2B
organisations
to really know
their customers
You can’t be customer-centric, relevant, and
inspirational without first knowing you need to know
your audience. Yet with complex buying groups
and diverse needs, it can be tricky to understand
customers as individuals. Without deep customer
understanding, B2B organisations struggle to match
the omnichannel B2C customer experiences people
have come to expect.
Opportunity
Build intelligence and design around
the customer
Finding commonalities among buyers and influencers
provides an actionable understanding of the most
important customer archetypes and use cases.
Focusing on a smaller number of distinct groups
enables rapid progress. And by using design thinking
research techniques to uncover insights and break
assumptions, you can understand customer behaviour,
needs and experiences. Quickly testing newfound
insights in a live environment creates a continuous
feedback loop that expands audience understanding.
Segment-based personalisation and marketing
automation takes this new knowledge and makes it
customer-centric. With a 360-degree view of individual
customers across sales, marketing, and service, you
will better understand their preferences, and can tailor
their experiences appropriately.
Challenge
2
Challenge 3
B2B digital estates
are fractured and
chaotic
Many organisations have multiple customer-facing sites, apps, and
chatbots in addition to telephone, email, and face-to-face sales
channels. Siloed systems and disparate touchpoints intensify the
challenges of consolidating customer information. They also result
in inefficient, duplicated, and inconsistent customer experiences.
Without a shared mission, internal stakeholders can’t see past the
complexity, and won’t pull in the same direction.
Opportunity
Create a centre of gravity for the experience
Once key stakeholders are signed-up to a shared mission, the
next task is more mechanical, but no less essential: mapping
the full spectrum of current touchpoints. It’s important
to pinpoint weak or neglected experiences at this stage –
from lead capture forms to logged-in portals. By replacing
the complex data, technology, and operational layers with
centralised data and integrated workflows, you can realise
potential right across the customer experience.
With a clear view of the customer journey, you’ll identify
opportunities for storytelling and signature interactions that
really create value for your customers and your organisation.
Blending content and commerce throughout journeys keeps
your customers engaged and inspired.
Creating such a centre of gravity for customer experience
enables you to inspire a shared belief in the future, connect
sales, marketing, and services, and focus internal teams on
making those fewer, bigger bets that unlock growth and drive
the business forward.
Conclusion –
and what you
can do next
Inspired, B2B
means working
better, together
Gone are the days of traditional waterfall
transformation programmes, along with unrealistic
visions, siloed departments, and technical roadmaps
that are never completed. Today’s transformations
need integrated teams with a shared passion,
creativity grounded in technical capabilities, and
clear outcomes that benefit customers, employees,
and the business.
Rallying the organisation around a clear and inspiring
experience vision is business critical – not a nice-
to-have. The most successful transformation
programmes address the three challenges
we’ve outlined from day one: they establish the
right culture with the right people; they design
transformation roadmaps that rapidly release
value; and they get to know customers in a live
environment.
By deploying experience design,
cultural change, fluid process,
unified data, and sustainable
technology in parallel, B2B
brands can deliver experiences
that inspire all and unlock
future growth.
About Wunderman Thompson
We exist to inspire growth for ambitious brands. Part creative agency, part consultancy and part
technology company, we provide expert end-to-end capabilities at a global scale to deliver inspiration
across the entire brand and customer experience.
We are 20,000 strong in 90 markets around the world, where our people bring together creative
storytelling, diverse perspectives, inclusive thinking, and highly specialised vertical capabilities to drive
growth for our clients.
We offer deep expertise across the entire customer journey, including communications, commerce,
consultancy, CRM, CX, data, production, and technology. Wunderman Thompson is a WPP agency.
(NYSE: WPP).
For more information, please visit and follow Wunderman Thompson
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To help B2B marketers evaluate their current strategic
and operational status, Wunderman Thompson has
developed the Inspired B2B Assessment Score. This simple
tool helps clients identify areas for improvement and
create winning strategies that drive growth and nurture
passionate brand fans.
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Inspired, B2B
Assessment Score
The authors
David Stocks Strategy Partner
at Wunderman Thompson
David Stocks is a Strategy Partner at Wunderman
Thompson with a track record of transforming complex
organisations by aligning stakeholders around inspiring,
and long-term visions for the future of their customer
experience. Recent client experience includes GE, EY,
ABB, Mercedes-Benz, and Pets at Home.
Jaap Van Oort Strategy Director
at Wunderman Thompson Technology
Jaap Van Oort is Strategy Director at Wunderman
Thompson Technology, guiding ambitious brands
in leveraging their Data & Technology to deliver
exceptional customer experiences for brands like
Whirlpool, Dyson, Hilti and PVH.
