How to research customer satisfaction effectively in B2B

Key takeaways: Measuring customer satisfaction in B2B requires a more tailored approach than B2C for various reasons. NPS is a less useful metric – CSAT scores still work well, but for insights from a senior B2B audience, you may need to use qualitative research. In this guide, we cover how to set up a customer research project, design the research materials, manage fieldwork, analyze the results, and inform your customer satisfaction strategy.

Challenges with customer satisfaction research in B2B

One of the most effective ways of exploring how satisfied – or dissatisfied – your customers are is through a focused market research project. However, getting actionable results in B2B requires more planning and foresight than for consumer-facing brands.

Whether online or offline, customer dissatisfaction often leads to churn. McKinsey data shows that at least 50% of B2B buyers will change their service provider if they have a poor customer experience across online or offline channels.

It goes without saying that tracking customer satisfaction, identifying issues, and improving any notable areas of weakness should reduce churn and lead to long-term growth.

Customers are more likely to buy again, increase their spending, recommend your business to new potential buyers, and so on.

However, tracking customer satisfaction in B2B is less straightforward than in B2C for several reasons. To name a few:

• Using NPS in B2B market research (‘How likely are you to recommend [company] to a friend or colleague?’) is not as useful as it is in B2C. Arguably, there are several types of customer loyalty in B2B, such as preferential or forced loyalty, making the score hard to interpret accurately.
• 5-star ratings (e.g. ‘Please rate the service you received today: ☆☆☆☆☆’) are fine for quick, transaction-based results. But they’re rarely informative enough to get the nuanced feedback required to improve complex B2B services.
• Respondent sample sizes tend to be lower in bespoke B2B research, as the senior decision-makers with the most valuable insights are hard to reach.

However, with the right approach, there are several ways to effectively research customer satisfaction in B2B, as we’ll explore in this guide.

Which metrics measure customer satisfaction in B2B?

Depending on your objectives, the type of B2B customer satisfaction metrics you’ll want will vary. Popular metrics include.

• Overall customer satisfaction score (CSAT): e.g. On a scale of 1-10, where 10 is extremely satisfied and 1 is extremely dissatisfied, how would you rate your satisfaction with [company/service]?
• Customer effort score (CES): e.g. How easy was it for you to register for our free trial today?
• Customer churn analysis: e.g. What was the main reason why you decided to stop using [company]?
• Bespoke metrics based on your industry: e.g. How many times do you use our product a week, on average?

Building on the latter, it’s often better to use a metric that’s more specific to your industry or service offering. 

From previous sales data, identify which criteria most influence your sales and base it on this. This is a similar approach to the North Star metrics used by product managers.

But while it’s possible to track metrics for each of the above with just one or two questions, collecting data this way alone is hard to make meaningful recommendations from.

That’s why in B2B research, it’s common to use more exploratory research techniques in addition, which we’ll cover shortly.

Setting up the project

Engage key internal stakeholders early and make plans to keep them informed throughout the project at major milestones.

This step is crucial if your customers interact with various departments like service, product, sales, and account teams.

Stakeholders may need to:

• Grant access to customer contact details or verify data-sharing permissions
• Require convincing about the benefits of customer satisfaction research
• Provide input during the design stage with their own questions
• Follow up on research results

Excluding stakeholders from the research process might lead them to challenge final insights and recommendations, questioning the validity of your questions or customer selection.

A market segmentation helps here, dividing your customer base into groups with similar wants, attributes, and behaviors. Basing your customer satisfaction research on these segments allows for result comparison and targeted follow-up action plans.

Consider spending differences among customer accounts, segments, and international markets when setting up your research. Include key groups and factor in their relative importance.

Explore strategically important relationships in-depth, prioritizing major accounts. However, stakeholders sometimes prefer including everyone.

Collaborate with internal stakeholders to determine which customers’ feedback matters most before recruiting respondents. Establish target quotas to ensure a representative sample of your customer base, considering main buyer segments and customer spending.

Designing the research materials

When choosing between quantitative and qualitative research for customer satisfaction measurement, consider the following:

Quantitative research:

• Businesses often prefer this approach for customer satisfaction research, seeking robust metrics to track over time using B2B surveys
• But as covered earlier, B2B research typically involves smaller sample sizes compared to B2C studies.

Qualitative research:

• In-depth interviews with decision-makers at major accounts reveal the reasons behind satisfaction scores.
• This method also makes key clients feel valued, offering a more personal approach than online surveys.

Ideally, combine both methods to track satisfaction metrics and understand the underlying reasons. Resources permitting, collect qualitative insights in addition to quantitative surveys.

Examine satisfaction levels for various aspects of your client-facing operations to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Common areas to explore include:

• Overall satisfaction: E.g. CSAT scores for overall customer satisfaction with your business.
• Products and services: Evaluate satisfaction with your product development, perceived service quality, reliability, durability, appearance, and speed.
• Buying process: Assess website navigation ease and order customization options.
• Customer service: Inquire about overall customer service quality, staff availability, knowledge, helpfulness, responsiveness, proactivity, and complaint handling.
• Account management: Gauge satisfaction with account managers and reasons behind ratings.
• Delivery: Investigate satisfaction with speed, costs, and packaging.
• Pricing: Explore satisfaction regarding product or service pricing, discounts, invoice clarity, and perceived value for money.

Customer satisfaction fieldwork

Recruiting and getting feedback from the right research respondents is essential. In retailing and consumer services, it’s usually quick and cost-effective to find customers on respondent panels.

One of the most regularly debated topics in B2B research is whether respondent panels are a reliable source for recruitment.

In our experience, most online research panels don’t have senior decision-makers, if they even have B2B respondents at all – we explain this in our guide to the problem with B2B research panels.

So, what can you do instead? Better options include:

1. Using alternatives to panel sample: You can find high-quality respondents for B2B research via: LinkedIn; industry events and associations; trade publications and websites; independent online forums; competitor websites and marketing; your CRM.
2. Building a proprietary database: If you conduct lots of research, setting up your own database of interested participants is a much better option. Your own branded panel will work better than a third-party one, because you have complete control over respondent quality. 

To make participation rates as high as possible, personalize your outreach approach – don’t send a template message.

Make a compelling case – explain the benefits of participating, appeal to their sense of curiosity, and offer the most appropriate incentives for your audience.

If using qualitative interviews, use experienced moderators familiar with your industry for the fieldwork itself.

They need to be familiar not only with the terminology, but also when is the right time to probe for more detail from respondents so as not to miss key insights. 

For advice on getting the best results out of quantitative fieldwork, here are our best practices for online surveys.

Analysis and reporting

Avoid overwhelming your customer satisfaction research reports with excessive scores.

This often results in a ‘data dump’ that’s hard to interpret and act on – you don’t need to include every answer in your report. Instead, focus on the most relevant and actionable insights.

When analyzing qualitative results, be through. Identify common themes from the interviews and run brainstorming sessions to uncover the most compelling stories:

• Review and organize transcribed interviews
• Identify initial themes aligned with project objectives
• Brainstorm findings as a team
• Revise themes and conduct additional interviews if needed
• Create visual storyboards of key findings for easy sharing

For quantitative data, highlight statistically significant findings. Include significance testing in your tables to emphasize noteworthy results:

• Clean the data by removing invalid responses
• Format data into tables for easier analysis and comparison
• Focus on the original project objectives
• Highlight statistically significant findings
• Exclude uninteresting or redundant data

Filter your results by factors like customer spend, if you have sufficient data. This approach leads to more powerful conclusions and commercially-prioritized next steps.

Informing your customer satisfaction strategy

Make sure that the changes needed to improve customer satisfaction take place. Keep the momentum up once the final results and recommendations have been shared to ensure the research shapes your customer strategy.

We recommend:

• Tailored reports and recommendations: Use a visual format to easily share the findings around the right departments – such as flow diagrams, infographics, and videos.
• Additional workshops and check-ins: Follow-up workshops are a great way to absorb the information, clarify the implications, and agree on actions or next steps. Check-ins can be set to monitor progress in actioning next steps from the research.
• Develop action plans with customers: You could also collaborate with a select few key customer accounts to develop action plans, based on the results, to make sure your next steps will land well.
• Integration with CRM and Business Intelligence systems: Consolidate customer feedback data into your CRM system. Consider using additional business intelligence tools to analyze this data alongside other customer information stored in the CRM.

Also, after the research, thank customers for their time. Explain how their feedback will drive change.

Set customer expectations by telling them what you’re doing next and ideally, when they’ll start seeing the improvements.

Best practices for B2B customer satisfaction research

#1 Research customer satisfaction for competitors too

It’s highly valuable to include competitor benchmarking in your customer satisfaction research. Many companies overlook this, focusing solely on their own performance metrics.

Satisfaction scores gain meaningful context when compared to industry standards. For instance, a 90% satisfaction rate may seem impressive in isolation, but it loses its luster if a competitor achieves 95% satisfaction for similar offerings.

Knowledge from competitor research helps pinpoint areas where your business needs to improve to gain a competitive edge.

#2 Include secondary research sources to add context

Consider using both primary research and secondary research, often referred to as desk research, to explore customer satisfaction. Desk research is a cost-effective way to collect market intelligence and understand competitor perceptions.

Sources for researchers include company annual reports, trade press, industry publications, social media, online reviews, independent associations, and much more.

For example, there’s the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). It’s a US cross-industry measure of customer satisfaction.

#3 Use advanced analytics to explore subconscious satisfaction

Statistical methods, such as regression analysis and trade-off analysis techniques, can reveal underlying factors that shape customer loyalty and perceptions. 

Advanced analytics with a customer focus can explore beyond what they are explicitly saying, but read between the lines to show what they really mean.

Regression analysis shows the connections between a dependent variable (the outcome) and various independent variables, e.g. factors, product features, and so on. This tool helps businesses identify the most influential aspects affecting customer satisfaction and behavior.

Furthermore, statistical modeling can detect a ‘shadow effect’ – a dominant factor that substantially impacts satisfaction scores, regardless of performance in other areas.

This insight allows B2B service organizations to prioritize improvements that will have the most significant impact on overall customer satisfaction.