Gallup: 71% of B2B Customers Are at Risk

Key Points:

• Companies are ignoring the concept of customer centricity in B2B,
  prohibiting organic growth.
• B2B suppliers focus too much on their price and product, rather than
  their customers’ problems.
• Suppliers do not truly understand or can deliver what their customers
  want.

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A multiyear research study by Gallup — based on 108,989 respondents,
19,093 business units and the analysis from measuring the engagement of
nearly 18 million customers — has revealed that B2B companies are at
risk of losing two-thirds of their customer base. These companies are
failing their clients through low levels of customer engagement and not
creating a customer-centric organization to “view the world through the
lens of their customers.”

Gallup analysis finds that 29% of B2B customers are fully engaged — that
is, emotionally and psychologically attached to the companies they do
business with. The other 71% are ready and willing to take their
business elsewhere.

The analysis further highlights problem resolution as a key touchpoint
to creating a strong customer relationship. One in five B2B customers
have encountered problems with a company or product, with only 40% of
customers believing the company resolved their problem. And only 5% of
these customers say they are “very satisfied” with the way the company
handled the problem.

Gallup’s analysis found that businesses that have high customer
engagement scores outperform those with lower scores by at least 30%
across outcomes such as profitability, sales and customer attrition.

Gallup’s Guide to Customer Centricity: Analytics and Advice for B2B
Leaders provides both analytics from the research study and
best-practice advice from Gallup’s work with large companies to create
customer-centric organizations.

Ed O’Boyle, Global Practice Leader, says, “Realizing the effect a
customer-centric strategy has on their business performance is crucial
to creating authentic growth, and companies in Gallup’s database that
are actively measuring and managing their customer-centric framework are
finding that problems are occurring less frequently than before.

Gallup’s research shows that developing an extensive knowledge of a
customer’s business and proactively introducing ideas that enhance the
bottom line are the strongest factors in generating positive and strong
relationships that stand the test of time.”

— ENDS —

GALLUP’S B2B CLIENT DATABASE

Gallup’s historical B2B client database contains information from B2B
client leaders and employees who completed the Gallup customer
engagement survey between 2001 and 2014. It holds data from 17,983,420
respondents from 358 client organizations in 60 countries, 39 languages
and 60 industries (categories based on North American Industry
Classification System codes).

Gallup updates its database annually. Findings used to conduct research
and set benchmarks are based on five-year rolling periods. Gallup’s 2015
customer engagement database includes data from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
and 2014. This analysis includes data from B2B clients only.

GALLUP’S B2B META-ANALYSIS

Gallup’s most recent meta-analysis on customer engagement and
organizational outcomes in the B2B context accumulated 23 research
studies, including three U.S. Gallup Panel studies and nine B2B clients
across six industries and two countries. Within each study, Gallup
statistically calculated the business unit-level relationship between
customer engagement and the performance metrics supplied by the various
companies. In total, Gallup included 108,989 respondents comprising
19,093 business units in the analysis. Gallup studied six broad classes
of outcomes: profitability, revenue/sales, share of wallet, customer
attrition, days sales outstanding (DSO) and brand preference.

Download the full report at http://www.gallup.com/services/187877/b2b-report-2016.aspx

Contacts

Limelight PR
Hayley Parker
02079278100
Hayley.parker@limelightpr.co.uk