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CustomerGauge Exclusive Partner, Australia and New Zealand · 20+ years CX and NPS consulting
B2C customer feedback techniques don’t work in B2B.
A relatively small number of high value customers, each with several stakeholders, needs a B2B specific approach.
Send an email survey to your C-level contact and they tick a few boxes, maybe take offence or, most often, never see it because their EA deleted it.
We show your most important customers they matter by listening to them in person. In return they tell us the truth.
Combined with an email survey for lower value clients and contacts, this approach gathers insights you will not hear any other way.
Your Key Accounts Often Won’t Tell You the Truth
In B2B your customers depend on you as much as you depend on them, which is exactly why they hold back when your own people ask.
A high value client is as wary of upsetting you as you are of upsetting them. If they are unhappy and looking to switch suppliers, rocking the boat when they still rely on you only has downside.
So you get a good score and a polite comment, while they are actively negotiating with your competitor.
The Worst Person to Do the Asking Is the Chief Executive
“But what if our CEO makes some calls?”
No client will dob in the team they work with every day to the chief executive. That jeopardises the very working relationship they rely on.
Your account manager is the next worst, for the opposite reason. They have the most invested in the answer being good, they know where the landmines are and they’re not about to show them.
An independent interviewer carries none of that baggage.
As a third party we hear the things your customers will not say to you directly.
You Probably Already Suspect the Problem. What You Lack Is Evidence
Most of the time the organisation already suspects where the key problems lie when they approach us.
This is especially true of the front line.
They know, for instance, that delivery is a problem or that customers get lost while onboarding. And they’ve been telling middle management about it for years.
The problem is not knowledge.
It’s evidence. Evidence that customers are at risk. Evidence that the executive team can act on.
A front line staff member saying “delivery is a problem” gets little traction with middle management.
One major customer saying “delivery is a problem” is dismissed as anecdotal: they don’t understand and it’s just one client.
But five of your ten largest customers saying “delivery is a problem” gets attention, this quarter, with a budget to fix it.
That is what we provide.
Not just discovery but also evidence, attached to accounts and revenue, that your executive team cannot argue with.
What You Get
- An executive summary of the key results and the opportunities for action
- Your Net Promoter Score
- An importance and performance chart: your strengths, where to focus, and where you may be over-investing
- Charts for each question, weighted by customer revenue where you want it
- The qualitative feedback, in your customers’ own words
- Transcript level detail from each interview
We present the findings to your leadership team.
Survey Your Staff As Well
While you’re at it, we recommend your staff take the same survey, by email, so you can compare the customer and staff views.
Surprisingly, staff can be much harder on the business than customers in some areas, and much easier in others.
That comparison is often a very useful part of the report, because it shows you your blind spots.
What It Costs
From AUD 15,000, including the email survey. The price depends mainly on the number of interviews.
Most clients repeat the programme every year or two, to track improvement and rebalance where they focus.
What Clients Say
“Reports produced by Genroe are of superior quality enabling the business to critically analyse its position to ensure decision making is sound and based on best practice data. I have no hesitation recommending Genroe to other business colleagues.”
Why Your Customers Agree to Meet with Us
They agree because they want things to improve.
Changing a supplier in B2B is miserable. It is risky, it is expensive, it consumes senior management time, contracts have to be negotiated and terminated, and people have to be retrained.
If their current supplier gets better instead, that is a far better outcome for them.
Confidential and Not Confidential at the Same Time
Every comment in the report is anonymised - that’s why people are candid in their responses.
But when you read a specific comment and want to act on it, we go back to the person who said it and ask whether we can share their name.
Confidential by default, attributable by consent.
A negative comment can become a service recovery task, not an anonymous grievance.
How the Programme Runs
A typical programme is 15 to 25 interviews with high value contacts, alongside an email survey of your wider contact base.
- You give us the list, ranked by revenue, strategic weight or the segments you want covered.
- You email them first. The request comes from a senior person at your business, not from a stranger. That email is why people book the meeting with us.
- We book a formal meeting at a time that suits them.
- The interview runs 15 to 30 minutes by video, with a senior Genroe consultant who can hold a business conversation, not a call centre working through a script.
- Calls are transcribed, and the detail goes into the analysis.
The interviews give you depth from the accounts that matter most, while the email survey gives you quantitative scoring across the base. Neither works well alone; together they change what the business does.
When Not to Do This
This programme works where you have an 80/20 customer value split: a handful of accounts carry most of the revenue, so an hour with each of them is cheap against what one of them is worth.
If you have lots of customers who are all worth roughly the same, you should be looking at an always-on programme: CustomerGauge surveying every transaction, with volume doing the work that depth does here.
Executive Interview Programme Questions
How many customers do you interview?
- A typical programme runs 15 to 25 interviews with high value contacts, chosen from a list you rank by revenue, strategic weight or the segments you want covered. The number matters less than the coverage: five of your ten largest customers saying the same thing is what moves a business.
Who actually does the interviews?
- A senior Genroe consultant with real business experience, not a call centre and not an AI script. Your customers are senior people and they answer differently when the interviewer can follow a business conversation, and knows which answers to push on.
Are the comments confidential?
- Comments are anonymised in the report, which is what makes people candid. Where a specific comment matters enough to act on, we go back to that person and ask permission to share their name. Confidential by default, attributable by consent.
Why would our customers agree to be interviewed?
- Because changing supplier is expensive, risky and slow, so they would much rather you improved. A customer who gives you half an hour is investing in keeping a relationship they already have. The request landing from your business first, rather than from a stranger, is what gets the meeting.
Can our account managers just ask instead?
- Your account manager has the most invested in a good answer, and your customer has to work with them again next week. Neither party will risk the relationship to have the honest conversation. That is the reason the interview goes to someone outside your business.
What does an executive interview programme cost?
- From AUD 15,000, including the email survey of your wider contact base. The price depends mainly on the number of interviews. Most clients repeat the programme every year or two to track improvement.
Let’s Talk About Your Key Accounts
If your largest accounts are the ones you are least sure about, that is the case for having someone else make the call.
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