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B2B Costumer Experience
(2019)
ANDRITZ AG is an international technology group providing plants, systems, equipment, and services for various industries. The company is one of the globalmarket leaders in the hydropower business, the pulp and paper industry, the metalworking and steel industries, and in solid/liquid separation in the municipal and industrial segments. The market ANDRITZ AG is operating in is a highly competitive, fragmented and mature market. As business-to-business customers start demanding a better experience, leading companies increasingly put customer experience at the heart of their strategies. In order to make buying for customers easier and create unique customer experiences, marketers need to understand the customers’ purchase journey and identify the most significant customer challenges at each touchpoint throughout their path-topurchase. Touchpoints are the moments of truth: whether customers buy as well as whether they will be loyal is decided at the touchpoints of a company. For this reason, the Pumps division of ANDRITZ AG aims to identify and evaluate the for customers relevant touchpoints, to be able to optimize marketing resource allocation per touchpoint and improve touchpoint effectiveness, to ultimately increase the number of new customers. For this purpose, within the framework of this thesis a touchpoint evaluation tool is developed to provide the ANDRITZ AG Pumps division with a touchpoint evaluation from the customer perspective, allowing to derive action recommendations for the future management of the touchpoints identified. For the evaluation of touchpoints, at least four dimensions need to be examined from the customer point of view: touchpoint awareness, touchpoint importance, touchpoint quality and the touchpoint impact on decision-making. As a basis for the touchpoint evaluation, a primary research was conducted directly involving customers, to find out how they perceive selected touchpoints which were identified in an internal analysis before. As a result, it turned out that the contact to sales representatives is the most important touchpoint and critical moment of truthregarding its influence on purchase decisions throughout all phases of the examinedindustrial customer journey. As personal contact is key, the development of the sales and service team is therefore a critical success factor for the creation of a unique customer experience along industrial customers’ path-to-purchase. As other important touchpoints were mainly online touchpoints, investments in the optimization of the company’s online presence are furthermore suggested.
