Tips For Understanding Your Customers

How can we best serve our customers if we don’t understand them? We can’t. That’s why it is vital that business owners work hard to understand their customers. At New Quest Coaching and Consulting, we provide strategic planning services and consulting. We know that understanding your potential clients will help you better convert them into real clients. Understanding your present clients will help you better retain them.

Here are a few tips to help you understand your customer base:

Pretend You are Your Own Customer

Walk a kilometre in a customer’s shoes. How does it feel? Mentally, or literally, go through all the points of contact a customer might go through. Cruise your website. Is it clunky and hard to navigate? Is the content current? Can you easily find what you’re looking for? Give your business a call and assess the process. It should be simple, friendly and efficient. Does your business involve deliveries? If so, how smooth is the process? Customers have plenty of options when it comes to acquiring goods and services. If you want them to choose you, you need to provide personal, efficient service delivery consistently. If you can do that, you can be confident they’ll choose you – and tell their friends about you, too.

Data Speaks

While getting to know clients on a personal, individual basis is a great way to build positive relationships, finding patterns and consistencies concerning your customer base as a whole will help build your understanding of the big picture. Your Customer Relationships Management system (CRM) provides valuable details about your customers, including patterns about when your customers generally place orders/instigate contact, what neighbourhoods they live in, how much they’re spending, and what they are buying. CRMs contain information about the behaviour and preferences of your customers. This helps you identify and anticipate their needs, allowing you to ensure your current customers are satisfied and new customers are consistently being drawn to your business through appropriate target marketing.

Ask Them

Go to the source. If you really want to know if your customers are satisfied, ask them. And then listen to what they say. Customer satisfaction surveys can speak volumes about likes and dislikes that most people will not come right out and tell you. The feedback you receive can help instigate positive changes, promote team building, and ensure future customers will find a smoother, more positive process in place. You have to be prepared to make the changes in order for the surveys to be effective, though. If surveys keep coming in letting you know your hours of operation need to be expanded, you have to be prepared to seriously consider making changes. If issues such as customers being turned off by pushy salespeople come to light, you now have a chance to explore other, less intrusive sales techniques with your staff. Once changes are in motion, let your customers know that the changes were instigated by their feedback. Everyone likes to feel heard, so let them know you care about what they think and are working hard to meet their needs.

Answer Key Questions

Now that you’ve put yourself in their shoes, analyzed the data and received customer feedback, see if you can answer the following questions:

Who your customer is?
What they hope to purchase?
Whey they plan to purchase?
Where they are coming from?
How they choose to pay?
How much they are willing to pay?

If all of this information mining seems daunting, consider getting help with your strategic planning. At New Quest Coaching and Consulting, we customize Strategic Planning services specifically for you. Contact us to find out how our strategic planning services can transform your outlook for success.