Customer experience (CX) is the sum of every interaction a customer has with your brand — and how they feel about those interactions. In B2B environments, experiences are often more complex, involving longer buying cycles, multiple stakeholders and continuous proof of value. Yet expectations remain high. Customers want seamless, personalised and reliable experiences across every channel and touchpoint.

Delivering this consistently requires alignment across marketing, sales, product and service teams, supported by technology that unifies data, orchestrates journeys and measures outcomes. Done well, customer experience becomes more than an initiative — it’s the differentiator that drives loyalty, growth and lifetime value.

This post will cover:

• What is customer experience?
• Why is customer experience important?
• Examples of customer experience
• What is customer experience management?
• What does good customer experience look like?
• What does poor customer experience look like?
• Customer experience vs. customer service
• Creating a customer experience strategy
• How to measure and analyse customer experience

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is every interaction a customer has with your company across all channels and departments — from the first touchpoint to contract renewal and beyond.

In B2B contexts, this includes marketing, sales, procurement, onboarding and support. Each touchpoint shapes perception and sentiment, ultimately determining whether stakeholders view your brand as reliable, responsive and value driven.

CX is more than a checklist of actions. It encompasses feelings, impressions and expectations. Every website visit, support call or product demo has the power to strengthen — or weaken — the relationship.

Why is customer experience important?

In competitive markets where products and services can feel interchangeable, customer experience is the deciding factor. It affects sales, retention, brand loyalty and customer lifetime value.

A seamless B2B experience accelerates time-to-value, creates internal champions and unlocks cross-sell and upsell opportunities. A poor experience does the opposite — slowing adoption, eroding trust and increasing churn.

Builds a personal connection.

Customers expect tailored, frictionless interactions. Meeting this expectation strengthens trust and loyalty, turning transactions into relationships.

Shapes reviews and referrals.

Satisfied customers share positive experiences, while dissatisfied ones amplify negative ones. Reviews and referrals carry significant weight in purchase decisions, especially in B2B buying groups.

Encourages brand loyalty.

When customers feel valued, they are more likely to return, advocate and grow with you — reducing marketing costs and increasing ROI.

Examples of customer experience.

Customer experience can take many forms depending on the business and the industry. For example:

• Retail: A seamless checkout process combined with friendly, attentive staff encourages repeat visits and positive word-of-mouth marketing.

• Digital: Fast website load times, easy navigation and clear product information reduce frustration and improve customer satisfaction.

• Customer support: Empathetic, knowledgeable and timely responses help resolve issues quickly, building trust and loyalty.

• Personalisation: Personalised recommendations, tailored offers and follow-up emails make customers feel valued and understood.

• In-store: Clean, well-organised environments and helpful staff create a welcoming atmosphere that enhances overall perception.

• Post-purchase: Prompt delivery, hassle-free returns and proactive communication keep customers happy beyond the sale.

What is customer experience management?

Customer experience management (CXM) is the discipline of analysing, measuring and improving every customer interaction.

In B2B, CXM means aligning teams around complex sales motions, ensuring smooth onboarding and continuously demonstrating ROI. It requires unified data, role-based personalisation and cross-departmental visibility to anticipate needs and strengthen relationships.

Technology plays a central role. From marketing automation to customer success platforms, CXM relies on tools that personalise engagement, monitor account health and surface insights that drive proactive action.

What does good customer experience look like?

• Ease: Reducing friction across the buying journey, from procurement to support.

• Consistency: Reliable, connected touchpoints across every channel.

• Value: Clear ROI demonstrated through communication, onboarding and support.

Good CX doesn’t have to be flashy. It’s about making it simple for customers to achieve their goals while building trust through reliability and responsiveness.

What poor customer experience looks like?

Poor CX often stems from generalised, disconnected approaches. In B2B, this may show up as:

• Slow onboarding or technical set-up.

• Misaligned or inconsistent messaging across departments.

• Limited visibility into account health or usage data.

• Difficult purchasing processes or poorly designed digital experiences.

The cost is high. Globally, billions are lost each year due to avoidable churn caused by bad experiences.

Customer experience vs. customer service.

Customer service is a component of customer experience. It focuses on resolving issues and assisting customers at specific moments. CX is broader, encompassing every interaction across marketing, sales, onboarding, support and renewal.

Both are essential. High-quality service strengthens trust, but a strong CX strategy ensures that trust extends across the entire journey.

Creating a customer experience strategy.

A strong CX strategy requires organisation-wide alignment. In B2B, this means shared KPIs like Net Revenue Retention (NRR), cross-functional playbooks and role-specific messaging for technical users, procurement teams and executive sponsors.

Key elements include:

• Feedback loops: Establish mechanisms for gathering and analysing customer feedback to understand needs, preferences and pain points. Having a customer experience management system in place can provide critical data points that are necessary for building a robust strategy.

• Omnichannel consistency: A consistent and integrated experience across multiple channels and touchpoints encourages ongoing engagement with your brand. Start by establishing all the pivotal touchpoints that a potential customer encounters during the customer acquisition process. Consider their expectations for a fulfilling experience and compare that to the existing processes in a company.

• Self-service options: Provide customers with convenient self-service options, such as knowledge bases, FAQs and interactive tools. Self-service options put the power in their hands, allowing them to take control of their own customer experience. Rather than relying on assistance from customer support agents or representatives, customers can explore and resolve their queries or issues on their own terms.

• Personalisation: Tailor experiences based on individual customer preferences and behaviours, delivering relevant content, recommendations and offers. Personalisation demonstrates that your organisation understands and values each customer as an individual and increases the likelihood of winning their repeat business.

• AI and automation: Artificial intelligence technologies, such as chatbots or virtual assistants, can automate routine tasks, provide real-time assistance and enhance efficiency. AI can analyse virtually endless amounts of customer data, like purchase history, browsing behaviour or past interactions, to produce opportune insights. These insights can be used to personalise recommendations, anticipate customer needs and deliver targeted marketing campaigns.

• Proactive engagement: Anticipate customer needs and actively keep in touch with targeted information, proactive support or personalised recommendations before customers even ask. Proactive experiences contribute to a customer-centric approach, which makes customers feel supported and well-cared for throughout their journey.

• Analytics: Gather and analyse meaningful customer data to gain insights, identify trends and make data-driven decisions. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can provide insights into interactions ranging from filed cases to email correspondence. Marketing automation tools can demonstrate which email messages resonate with your target audience and which do not, with statistics on open, read and click rates. And customer profiles can be developed from purchasing behaviours and key demographics to further segment target lists into personalised subgroups that may be more responsive to messaging than others.

How to measure and analyse customer experience.

To know whether CX strategies are working, organisations must measure outcomes — and those measurements are most effective when connected, not treated in isolation. Each method provides a different perspective and together they form a complete picture of customer health.

• Surveys capture customer sentiment directly. When paired with behavioural data, they validate whether perceptions align with actual usage. Adobe Customer Journey Analytics makes it possible to bring survey data together with engagement patterns for a more accurate view.

• KPIs such as NPS, retention and churn translate experiences into business outcomes. Tracked within unified dashboards, they show whether improvements in sentiment lead to higher loyalty or lower attrition. Adobe Analytics helps teams monitor these KPIs alongside web and mobile engagement data.

• A/B testing evaluates different variations of journeys or interfaces. When results are tied back to KPIs, organisations can see which experiences not only perform better in the moment but also drive long-term retention. Adobe Target enables testing at scale and connects those results back to conversion and revenue impact.

• Frontline feedback adds qualitative depth to the numbers. Insights from sales or support teams can be stored and connected with customer profiles in Adobe Experience Platform, enriching data so that feedback informs personalisation and journey design.

• Churn analysis highlights where customers are leaving. When integrated with support data, organisations can identify whether churn correlates with onboarding friction, product adoption or service issues. Customer Journey Analytics helps connect these signals across the lifecycle.

• Support data reveals recurring problems through tickets and case histories. Analysing these in the context of the full customer journey makes it easier to address root causes. Here, Customer Journey Analytics can surface where issues cluster, while Adobe Experience Platform ensures that they are tied to real-time profiles.

• Social listening extends the lens to external conversations. Comparing social sentiment with surveys, KPIs and support data helps confirm whether issues are isolated or systemic. When brought into unified customer profiles, this information sharpens audience understanding and improves personalisation.

Together, these approaches create a feedback ecosystem — surveys capture perception, KPIs and churn show impact, testing proves what works, frontline feedback explains context and external signals confirm scope. With Adobe for Business — powered by Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics — organisations can connect these signals to refine strategies, close gaps and prove the ROI of CX.

Improve customer experience with a robust platform of tools.

Customer experience is now a business-critical differentiator. Success depends on real-time insights, unified data and seamless co-ordination across teams.

Adobe Experience Platform provides the foundation by unifying customer and account data into real-time profiles. These profiles power personalised engagement across every stage of the journey.

• Orchestration and personalisation: With Adobe Journey Optimizer, businesses can design, automate and adapt journeys across email, mobile, web and beyond — delivering relevant experiences in the moment.

• Measurement and insights: Adobe Customer Journey Analytics connects engagement data to business outcomes, helping teams understand which journeys build loyalty, drive retention or lead to churn.

• B2B engagement: Adobe Marketo Engage enables marketers to nurture buying groups, align with sales and personalise outreach for complex B2B cycles.

• Content and delivery: Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Experience Manager Assets ensure that digital experiences and assets are consistent, optimised and ready to scale across markets and channels.

Together, these solutions help organisations move from disconnected touchpoints to a unified, measurable and scalable customer experience strategy — one that drives loyalty, retention and long-term growth.

https://business.adobe.com/fragments/resources/cards/thank-you-collections/generic