A comprehensive system for understanding your customer’s can be derived from Rudyard Kipling poem, “I Keep Six Honest Serving Men…â€Â and their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who. What a customer needs and wants from you is essential to understanding how to earn their business.
Find out what the customers’ needs are. The common names of products mean as little to them as the chemical names on the label of a proprietary drug. A sick person’s real need is safety, speed and relief. Understanding your customers’ needs enables you to profit by providing what buyers seek – satisfaction.
Products change, but basic benefits like personal hygiene, attractiveness, safety, entertainment, and privacy endure as do commercial purposes such as quests for competitive superiority or profitability. Successful manufacturers, retailers and service businesses produce benefits for which customers are willing to pay. In other words, successful businesses understand the reason for their customers’ buying decisions.
With that being said, why is it that so many businesses find it difficult to retain existing customers after the sale? Just how many product and service slipups does it take to send a customer packing? According to BIGresearch (an online marketing intelligence and Internet research company) survey results, 17 percent of customers will bolt after a single service slip up. Another 40 percent will jump ship after two instances of poor product or service delivery, and 28 percent more will go out the door after three slip ups. That’s 85 percent loss of clients due to service mistakes. So what do buyers really want from you?
In order of priority, here’s what customers say:
1. Knowledgeable and Available Employees. During a customer’s buying decision, they want knowledgeable assistance, available when they want it. Customers place a high value on receiving accurate information and they want to be served by employees who know their product and services inside and out.
2. Friendly and Cooperative Staff. Customers not only want product-savvy sales people, they want them to be friendly, courteous and efficient. Your staff should value each customer for more than just an individual sale.
3. Good Value. This is where price factors in for the customer. Most customers see price as only one component of the bigger picture of “value” that includes the product, service, information and follow-up.
4. Convenience. Make it easy for the customer! Customers want products that are well organized, attractively displayed and easy to find. This is how today’s customers define convenience and the easier it is for them to shop for a product or service, the more money small businesses can make on the bottom line.
5. A Fast and Efficient Finish. This final stage is where many businesses fall flat, right at the finish line. Customers who are in the decision making process are proceeding on your time. They want considerate and knowledgeable assistance. However, once the buying decision is made, get out of their way because now you are working on their time. Customers want to complete the transaction and be on their way as quickly as possible. If your product or service is not immediately available, then be sure to meet your committed timelines for delivery. This is not the time for making additional suggestions as the customer has already made up their mind and is ready to move on.
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