Key Takeaways

To understand the current state of customer experience (CX) management at business-to-business firms, Qualtrics XM Institute surveyed 155 CX practitioners at B2B and B2B&C companies with 1,000 or more employees about their organizations’ CX efforts. As part of this study, respondents also completed our CX Competency and Maturity Assessment. Highlights from this research include:

B2B companies prioritize CX. Customer experience is a significant or critical priority for 65% of B2B organizations, according to CX practitioners. Product experience is the second-most highly prioritized experience area for B2B companies.
Most organizations are in the first two stages of maturity. Just three percent of B2B organizations have reached the highest stage of maturity, Embed. More than two-thirds of organizations fell into the first two stages of maturity, Investigate (41%) and Initiate (31%). Use the Customer Experience (CX) Maturity Assessment to evaluate your organization’s CX skills and competencies.
B2B companies are listening to their customers. Eighty-seven percent of practitioners reported that their company uses relationship tracking as part of their CX management program. Additionally, over half said their company uses interaction feedback (68%) and journey feedback (54%). Just 2% of practitioners reported that their company did not use any of the six common listening posts.
Competing priorities is the top obstacle to B2B CX success. Sixty-nine percent of practitioners cited other competing organizational priorities as a significant obstacle to their organization’s CX management efforts, followed by poor integration across systems (61%) and technology limitations (53%).