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How to find out what your customers want

Guest post by: Helen Dowling

Article Overview: Finding out what your customers want can transform your business. Helen Dowling from Exceptional Thinking shows you how to find out.

How to find out what your customers want

What do your customers want? If you knew the answer to that question, what could you do with that information? And would you feel as powerful as Mel Gibson in “What Women Want?”

Knowing what your customers want will allow you to make some key decisions about your business such as:

• Giving your customers what they actually want.
• Finding out where your customers will go to find your product or service.
• Make strategic decisions about where your business is going (pricing, expanding and so on).

In short, knowing want your customers want gives you the key information you need to drive your business forward. Check out the case studies on the right to see how other companies have used this information.

So, how do you find out this information – how do you make sure you know what your customers want?

Here’s our top four tips to help you find out.

1) Know who your customers are.

Have you really identified who your customers are? 75% of companies find this really difficult and say to me that literally anyone can be their customer.

Usually, the reason they say this is because it’s difficult to put their customers into boxes i.e. a certain age, size, gender etc, so the answer to this is to think about things slightly differently.

Try this exercise: try to define exactly why your customers buy your type of product or service? Your customers could have bought it a year ago, a month ago, a week ago, but why have they decided to buy it now? What was the trigger?

And, if they wanted to buy your product or service, where would they go to find it?

Thinking about your customers in a slightly different way gives you clues about them and you will find that they have some things in common.

For instance, customers for a wedding organiser will use one because they don’t have the time to organise the wedding themselves. They also have to have money to be able to afford the services, so they will tend not to be young.

Customers for a HR company will probably find they need to use the service after some sort of crisis, i.e. a staff member has threatened to take them to court or they have had some sort of inspection.

2) Ask your customers.

Do you know what your customer really thinks of the product or service you provide? Most small business owners think they know, but haven’t actually asked. The danger with this is that either the owner carries on blindly, ignoring vital clues that their customers are not happy or they panic that they’re not doing a good job. It’s all based on assumptions, rather than fact.

The most common reason for not asking your customers what they think is fear – what if they say there’s a problem?

But the thing is, if you don’t know, you can’t do anything about it if there is a problem, but if you do know, you can sort it out and make your customer even happier.

Plus, 95% of your customers will be very happy with your product or service and if you ask them how they’re getting on, they’ll be impressed that you’ve taken an interest. So, try this exercise.

Write down all the questions that you’d like to know the answer to – how should we change our product or service; what did you like about it; why haven’t you come back for further work etc?

Put all these questions into an email and send it over to your customers (don’t forget to use the Bcc option if you send this out to all of them at once).

Once you get some responses, make sure you thank your customers and then take a balanced view – write down all the good things and all the bad things.

Decide what you will do to improve your business and let your customers know.

Don’t worry – you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

3) Your Top Customers

Do you know who your top customers are? Who are the ones that don’t hassle you, spend the most money with you? Are just great?

Do you think it makes sense to find out a bit more about them, so that you can reward them for being your top customer and really meet their expectations?

Try to find out who your top customers are – rank them by hassle factor, money spent etc.

Then arrange to meet them and have a chat how they’re getting on or invite them to an event you’re holding to celebrate your success and theirs.

Spend some quality time with them to find out more about them and more about what they want from you.

4) Use some outside help.

Approaching your customers and finding out more about them can be scary and if it is, you might want to consider using some outside help.

Customers may be more honest when speaking to someone from outside of your organisation and if you’re concerned about getting objective and truthful opinions this may be the best way to go.

Exceptional Thinking are experts in helping small companies to understand their customer and stand out from the competition and can provide you with a free, no obligation consultation to discuss your requirements.

Give us a call on 0845 644 9371 or email us on info@exceptionalthinking.co.uk for more information.

The more you find out about your customers, the more power you have to be able to improve your business to meet and exceed your customer’s expectations.

But if you don’t know, you can’t do anything about it and you’ll eventually find out that when your customers are looking for what you provide in the future, they just might look elsewhere!

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