We believe if you implement the suggestions in this post, 5 Ways to Better Understand Your Customers, you will see positive changes in your customer acquisition and retention.
We get it – business right now is crazy. And the last thing you need to do right now is to better understand your customers, right? If you had time to do that, you wouldn’t have time to do the real work, right?
Sounds a little preposterous – and yet, if you looked at your activity over the past 4 weeks, could you honestly say you were working on a premeditated plan to better understand your customers? Maybe not.
It does not have to be overly complicated, but it must be an essential part of your business model. Your customers thinking, flows and trends will mean tomorrow’s successes or failures for you and your business. This is why understanding them now will help you better prepare to meet their needs in the future. Here are 5 ways to better understand your customers:
Don’t assume you know their needs.
The business that assumes they know their customers based on hunches and inklings (as opposed to having hard, quantitative data) is raw arrogance. Business leaders can be prone to making broad, generalized comments about what their customers are thinking or need, but it is only based on a handful of conversations which likely is a 1% sampling of their customer base. Here are some suggestions:
- Ask questions. Don’t assume they don’t have further questions – ask them if they do. Don’t assume they are satisfied – ask them if they are. Don’t assume they understand what they’re buying – ask them if they do. And when you get their answers, enter that into their customer profile and make sure you action the concerns that are addressed.
- Incentivized surveys. Who doesn’t want the chance to win a $50 gift card for simply filling out a short, 1-minute survey about their recent customer service experience? The ROI on that $50 will be invaluable.
- Understand the market conditions. Were there massive layoffs in the community recently? Are there continuing weather patterns that are affecting normal life? Have any of your customers likely just received a stimulus check? These are all good things to know and can impact how you talk to your customers.
- An optimized website. Your website should contain the key search terms that people are looking for in your line of business. Google provides a free tool to help you analyze that. The words Google suggests are the words your potential customers are using, and so accordingly should be a part of the text on your site.
Action Step: Pick one of the 4 areas above and develop a plan to implement that one idea in the next 7 days. Then pick another area the week after.
Be an expert in how your product is found, purchased, and delivered.
Sure, your sales and estimates department is delivering, but did you know that it is taking 10 days for that estimate to get entered into your system? The customer is wondering, for 10 days, what’s happening and where things are at. Not good. There has to be a laser-focused obsession with better understanding your customer’s buying process.
Every part of your process needs to be thoroughly inspected by senior management. They need to know the hard, real numbers on delivery times for every step of the process (which is assuming you have every step of the buying process mapped out). Communicate to your team the expected results of every step, developing a process for those metrics to be delivered to you in a timely way. Hold your team accountable for hitting the metric. And when there are inevitable kinks in the process, own it, and find a way to fix it fast.
Action Step: Write out the process a customer has to go through in order to get their product. Get specific on current timeframes and ideal timeframes. Commit to making one incremental change in each timeframe each week.
Know your competition.
This is important to better understand your customer, because you will see the same things they are seeing: the competitor’s website, social media presence, content marketing, etc. You will see how well the information is presented and thus can better understand the messaging being delivered to your customer, and thus, can sharpen your own messaging.
Action Step: Take the time once a week to scope out your competitor’s websites and Facebook pages to see what they’re posting and sharing, so you can better communicate with your own customer base.
Follow up, assuming the buying relationship is not over.
You don’t know what your customer is going to buy in the future. Chances are, they do not either. Following up with them in the future based on their previous purchases and communicating other possible purchases can help them understand you better and it helps you understand what they are really trying to achieve.
Action Step: In the next 7 days, develop a follow-up strategy for one area of your business. Put it into action with your team, and then work on subsequent areas of your business in the weeks to come.
Treat them as family, not consumers.
Because they are – and the businesses that treat their customers like family have a major advantage over the businesses that treat their customers like a number.
That means:
- You are warm and kind to them on the phone.
- You ask them a question about their life and show interest.
- You follow up on discussion points from the past
In short, you treat them the way you would want to be treated (or maybe even a little better).
Action Step: write out your ‘customer care philosophy’ and implement it with your receptionist next week. Even 1 simple phone adjustment can have a huge impact: “What’s going on in your life today? Are you having a great day?”
Conclusion
Discovering ways to better understand your customers should not be an after-thought. Take some time to seriously consider this important aspect of your business plan and ensure its success.