How is Customer Experience in B2B changing and 5 questions to ask now

I have been highlighting key trends shaping B2B customer experience here on LinkedIn since 2022. Personally, I don’t view customer experience trends as one-year phenomena. Instead, I see them as powerful change forces that fundamentally reshape how we approach customer experience management in the years ahead.

Based on my consulting and research with some of the largest B2B companies, as well as discussions with leading experts in the field, here are my five key predictions for 2025 and beyond:

1. From reactive to predictive

2. Beyond surveys

3.  Commercial value

4. Redefining success

5. Re-skilling and up-skilling CX teams

Next, I will briefly outline how I see these changes playing out in practice. After each section, I’ve included a question you can use to spark discussions within your organization.

1.    From reactive to predictive

 Customer experience management has traditionally been quite reactive, which is one of the key criticisms of practices like surveying and customer journey mapping. When we rely on surveys, research, and analysis to draw conclusions based solely on past events, how does this prepare us for the future? How can we effectively manage risks or take advantage of opportunities if our understanding of customer experience is based on the past?

Companies typically measure their customer experience  through lagging CX indicators, such as NPS or CES but this only tells about the current situation. Similarly business indicators such as revenue, hit rate or churn are all lagging data. To change these lagging indicators, we must become predictive. The key to becoming predictive lies in understanding your leading indicators. These indicators represent what customers truly value and need: Customers don’t care about metrics like NPS or retention rates, they have their own jobs to be done and rely on us for support.

How we perform on leading indicators directly influences future customer behaviour. When we excel in these areas, the business impact becomes evident quickly: customers buy more, submit fewer support tickets, and their overall lifetime value increases.

One question to ask in 2025: Do we have information on both lagging and leading customer experience indicators to drive meaningful change?

Ps. How to uncover your leading indicators? Have a look at a short 30 minute webinar in CX Agency website from October 2024, where I explored this topic in detail.  

2.    Beyond surveys

 This change is probably one of my personal favorites. Going beyond surveys is a direct reflection of frustration expressed by companies and CX leaders. Measuring customer experience with surveys only is simply not enough in 2025.  Why so?

B2B customer journeys are complex and constitute of multiple different players from C-level decision makers to operative customer contacts, influencers and outsourced partners. At the same time core B2B operations such as maintenance and repairs are increasingly becoming digital with less human interactions. Equipment performance is monitored 24/7, with the smallest changes immediately alerting an action. Processes that used to rely on human intervention are increasingly managed via real-time data and self-repair.

As B2B operations become increasingly digital, so too do customer interactions and listening methods. Just as we monitor products, we must also track shifts in customer behavior using real-time data rather than relying on post-event surveys. AI-supported customer listening in digital interactions is a powerful solution that companies should actively explore as we approach 2025.

Another challenge in B2B is obtaining meaningful, actionable data from key decision-makers through surveys. These decision-makers often lack the time to respond to email surveys, and with response rates of just 5-10%, can we truly gather enough insights to drive scalable changes in account management and growth opportunities? One solution is conducting focus group interviews with selected key segments and customer profiles. This approach goes beyond surveys, providing in-depth qualitative insights into commercial value drivers and growth opportunities, with typical response rates ranging between 50-70%. 

One question to ask in 2025: What are the moments in our customer journey where we could use other methods than traditional surveys to get more actionable insights?

3.    Commercial value

The "beyond surveys" theme leads to the next topic which is customer value, and specifically commercial customer value in B2B.

The more I work with B2B sales and management with P&L responsibility, the more convinced I am experience elements are not enough on their own to create a sense of urgency. Customer experience is about the quality of the interactions and the overall relationship. Topics that are too easy to be seen as “nice to have”. Sometimes even for a customer!

So, what creates a sense of urgency when experience alone isn’t enough? For B2B decision-makers, the focus typically lies on reducing risks, improving process stability, supporting company sustainability and growth targets, and advancing personal growth opportunities. These are tangible objectives that directly contribute to the decision maker's success. Similarly, operational customer contacts and partners seek practical value—responsiveness, product availability, fast shipment times, transparency in stock levels, training, and more.

I have a long history of successfully integrating customer value thinking alongside customer experience for my B2B clients. Decision-makers, in particular, are a critical group whose voices we need to hear and understand if we want to remain competitive. Commercial value encompasses insights into growth and sales opportunities, which can be leveraged to drive sales and increase customer lifetime value. This insight should complement, not replace, customer experience data.

One question to ask in 2025: Is customer experience enough on its own if we want to improve our sales and customer lifetime value?

4.    Redefining success

Success in customer experience has been long defined through NPS (or CES, CSAT). But is this enough? Without wider view to customer experience and its impact to business we are limiting ourselves and our capabilities to drive meaningful changes.  

Here are some alternatives how to define success in B2B customer experience in the coming years:

• Account retention: Percentage of accounts retained year-over-year
• Expansion metrics: Growth within an account (upsell and cross-sell)
• Customer health score with predictive insights on customer behaviour, engagement levels, support interactions, and financial growth signals
• Proactive Issue Resolution Rate: Percentage of issues resolved before the customer reports them
• Alignment with customer long-term objectives such as ESG goals

These metrics will require robust data and technology, but more importantly, they demand a shift in mindset within B2B organisations. Simply measuring NPS (or CES, or CSAT) will no longer be sufficient to define success in customer experience.

One question to ask in 2025: If we could not measure success in customer experience through NPS (or CSAT or CES) which alternative KPI would we take?

5.    Re-skilling and up-skilling CX teams

 The biggest opportunity for CX teams in the coming years is to redefine why we exist. I see CX teams have two ways to go: Either stay as a market research function, with focus on data and technology, or become a true business partner.

Focusing solely on surveys, data analytics, and insights can confine CX teams to a market research function. As AI and technology take over tasks like data processing, sentiment analysis, and even predictive modeling, research-focused CX teams may struggle to demonstrate their value to the business.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. As AI and technology increasingly handle research and data analysis, CX teams have an opportunity to free up their time and take on more strategic roles within the organization. To truly elevate their position and be seen as business partners, CX teams must move beyond analytics and embrace responsibilities that directly drive business outcomes. A deep understanding of organisational change, change enablement, business process design, and strategic thinking will be essential skills for a future-ready CX team.

One question to ask in 2025: If we want to become a business partner, which are the core skills we need to start building now?

In summary, 2025 will be about tangible impact and re-positioning of CX teams as strategic business partners. I’m excited about the future of CX, particularly in B2B, where there’s great potential to drive strategic and operative changes and tangible business value.

How do you feel about these trends? What aspects are you personally most excited about?

Mark your calendars already now and join us January 28th for a free 30 min webinar where we will explore and discuss these trends with fellow B2B CX practitioners.