Towards the Voice of the Customer in a Business-to-Business Setting

Abstract

The Voice of the Customer (VoC) is an important concept used by businesses monitoring or improving customer journeys. There are numerous studies illustrating how the VoC in Business-to-Consumer customer journeys can be analysed. There are comparatively fewer such studies of Business-to-Business (B2B) organisations, arguably because customer journeys in this context tend to be less structured. For example, B2B sales processes are highly pragmatic and adapted to individual customers. Despite this added complexity, analysing the VoC in B2B settings is still possible. This thesis illustrates the analysis of the VoC in a B2B case company. Using a survey-based methodology, the thesis demonstrates how it is possible to identify crucial business-improving information from existing business customers. The significance of the results is two-fold. Firstly, findings can inform how different dimensions of an organisation (marketing, branding, sales, product management, strategy) can leverage this information. Secondly, customers can supply unexpected sources of business value, such as the ability to communicate in-person with representative of the case company more readily than with other companies.