Who Are They? Discovering Who Our MidMarket and Enterprise Customers Really Are

To align with overarching business goals, the digital experience needed to shift focus from small business owners to midmarket and enterprise customers.

As the Customer Digital Experience team at Comcast Business planned to transition from a small business to a larger business focus for their connectivity solutions, I was approached to conduct generative discovery research on these so-called “upper market” customers.

The team historically had a few assumptions about these customers:

  1. Customer segmentation depends solely on monthly telespend and number of locations.

  2. C-suite executives make all the decisions, and our digital experience should be tailored to these roles.

  3. The purchasing journey for upper market companies is similar to the purchasing journey of small businesses.

The team lacked a holistic view of these customers and the companies they work for, causing us to make incorrect assumptions about their needs and purchasing journeys.

Upon looking through past research, I quickly learned that there was very little research done on these customers. The research that had been completed had been conducted only on executive-level roles, such as CEOs and CIOs.

I hypothesized: by not including internal sales executives or hands-on roles such IT Directors and IT Systems Managers in our research, we have been neglecting key players in purchasing decisions and making incorrect assumptions about what they need from a digital experience when making broadband purchasing decisions.

As the lead researcher, I launched a wide range of activities to learn more about our customers.

Objectives

  • Learn who our middle market and enterprise-level customers are and how their needs, attitudes, and behaviors differ from each other and small businesses

  • Identify all key players involved in the purchasing journeys

  • Map both our current and prospective customers purchasing journeys from start to finish

  • Inform upcoming UX roadmap for 2024

Methods

  • Collaborate with market research team to send surveys to both current and prospective customers

  • Work with data analysis team to learn about customer journey to sales website and observe usage

  • Observe product team focus groups with sales executives to learn about the sales process for enterprise level customers

  • Complete IDIs with sales executives, prospects, and current customers to segment our users, learn about specific industries, and map prospect and current customers’ purchasing journeys

Data showed that segmentation should depend on connectivity needs and complexity of needed solutions, rather than business size and/or telespend alone.

By doing this, customers were funneled to the incorrect sales executives who did not specialize in their needs. Some larger companies have more basic connectivity and telecommunications needs than other smaller companies. The former then believed our solutions are overpriced, while the latter did not think we could meet their complex requirements.

For example, a large construction company may only need basic coax connectivity in their warehouses, while a smaller group of medical practices may need complex cybersecurity solutions and stringent uptime requirements.

This information sparked additional research to note differences in industries. The sample size for these interviews was small, therefore, more research is needed.

Now we know about business segments. But who should we target at these businesses?

Archetypes show who has influence at the company and who are the ones using the solutions and products.

Past research done by market research put together personas based on job title and did not include certain roles in the research, including help desk staff or end users.

By creating archetypes, I looked past their job title and instead categorized decision-makers based on their level of influence compared to their level of involvement in the day-to-day IT work being done. I learned:

  1. Roles such as IT Directors are the ones most involved in the purchasing journey. They do the research, work with vendors, and communicate findings to the C-suite. They “sell” the solution at their company.

  2. The executive roles define high-level goals and sends the above roles out to find services and solutions to meet those goals.

  3. Roles like Help Desk Representatives and business users (such as accounts payable staff) have more influence than previously thought. They provide feedback which informs decisions and business needs.

Journey and pain point maps illustrate where these archetypes move in and out of the process, regardless of telespend of number of locations.

They also show that the purchasing journey never really ends: it is not linear, nor is it purely transactional. It requires consistent nurturing with the right people.

This perspective demonstrates that the digital experience should be used to nurture relationship building.

It was previously thought that upon identifying a technology need at their company, a customer would utilize company websites to learn what their options are, fill out a lead form to connect with a sales team member, make a purchase, then begin utilizing their new services.

Through analyzing all of the data gathered from both our sales teams and prospective and current customers, I learned that:

  1. The purchasing journey is not linear: journey maps and pain point maps (pictured below) demonstrated various archetypes moving in and out of the journey, as well as the nonlinear fashion of the journey.

  2. Prospects and customers experience several pain points in both the digital experience and due to operational challenges of the company. The pain point map shows where they happen and their severity, along with recommendations.

  3. Sales reps use different tools to educate and sell to prospects that they have often created themselves, examples of which were included in the journey and pain point maps so that viewers can see examples.

With this new information, the direction for work became focused on how sales team members can utilize the digital experience to nurture relationships continuously. Creating a hub for prospects and customers to communicate with their assigned sales rep would:

  1. Save sales reps time and standardize materials used by sales teams.

  2. Give customers a hands-on, white glove experience that they expect.

  3. Cause less time to be wasted creating and maintaining portions of the digital experience that ultimately will not be utilized.

Next steps include concept testing for a new ProspectHub and an update to the current CustomerHub.

To be determined - due to reorganization within the company, concept testing has been put on hold.