Post-sale customer engagement should ensure consistently positive relationships that set the stage for renewal and growth. Customer experience suffers when customer-facing headquarters and regional teams are not aligned on roles and responsibilities. Organizations that lack clearly aligned and refined processes for customer lifecycle management are especially vulnerable to headquarters-regional misalignment. This is the first report in a four-part series on aligning regional and headquarters teams around customer engagement during the four phases of the customer lifecycle.
Regional variations cannot be avoided in B2B, but they must be identified and managed. In particular, misalignment between headquarters and regional teams responsible for post-sale customer engagement can damage the customer’s experience and hurt growth and retention. In this report, we identify three sets of common symptoms of headquarters and regional misalignment during the deliver/initiate phase of the customer lifecycle and provide recommendations for addressing these vulnerabilities and establishing better alignment.