B2B Customer Engagement Strategy: An Introduction to Managing Customer Experience

Business to business (B2B) transactions account for 60-70% of all transactions globally. Considering this, many supplier firms aspire to create high levels of customer engagement, and this involves identifying various ways to improve customer experience. In fact, companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others now employ professionals in customer engagement roles and dedicate entire corporate divisions to ensure seamless customer engagement. 

Creating high customer engagement is challenging without a cohesive, strategic approach – particularly in B2B markets. This textbook introduces students to customer engagement strategy in B2B markets, the foundation of which is customer engagement capability. Companies must develop and implement four sub-capabilities – customer journey management, customer relationship management, customer communications and data analytics and insight to succeed. 

With a myriad of case studies, discussion questions and prompts forfurther reading, the textbook translates theory into practice and serves as a useful foundation for executive courses as well as fundamental reading for masters-level specialist courses in customer engagement, marketing, sales, and strategy. In addition, practitioners in supplier firms will also be able to use to  build their customer engagement capability. 

Daniel D Prior is Associate Professor of Buyer-Supplier Engagement and Deputy Head (Courses) at the UNSW Canberra School of Business, University of New South Wales, Australia and is a Visiting Professor at Cranfield University, UK. Daniel’s work focuses on the factors, the circumstances and the forces that affect the survival of long-term, valuable buyer-supplier relationships in industrial markets.. Prior to academia, Daniel worked for companies such as Acer Computer Australia, KPMG Australia, and General Electric. Daniel received his PhD in 2008 from Macquarie University Australia. Daniel is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute and a Certified Professional Marketer as well as a Member of the Academy of Management and the Academy of Marketing Science. He is also the author of ‘Organisational Buying: A Multidisciplinary Perspective’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).