Find new ways to mine the most important insights to improve the customer experience.
Understanding your customers is the universal rule for entrepreneurs.
Successful businesses understand their customers' characteristics,
demographics, and buying habits. Exceptional businesses gain additional
insight into what their customers see, hear, think, and feel.
Knowing your customers so well that you can anticipate their needs
and exceed their expectations is the key to securing customer loyalty
and beating your competition. There are three key steps to achieving
deeper insights into your customer base:
1. Make better use of your data.
How well are you leveraging the customer data you currently
collect? This data--which may be stored in multiple databases across
your business--holds valuable information around customer
characteristics and buying habits, as well as your ability to serve
them. Analyze the data to understand when and where customers make
purchases. Identify customer segments that are most profitable and what
characteristics set this group apart. Analyze your customer service
performance, including response times, profitability on contracts, and
overall customer satisfaction. This information can help you to identify
your customers' needs more effectively. Keep in mind, however, that
this analysis will only address existing customers who are using
existing product or service offerings.
2. Shift to a more customer-centric business model.
To better meet evolving needs and improve the customer experience, you must shift away from an organizational or product view to a customer-focused view. A few questions to ask yourself:
- What does my customer need to accomplish and how can our company help?
- How can I better serve my customers?
- What relationships do my customers expect me to establish with them?
- How do our customers prefer to be reached and how do we fit into that routine?
- For what value is our customer base willing to pay and at what price?
Answering these questions requires customer analytics informed
through data, understanding your business through the customer's eyes,
and process improvements that focus on the customer.
3. Explore what your customers truly want, not just what they are asking for.
The ability to view your business through your customer's eyes can
lead to the discovery of new opportunities. As automaker Henry Ford
said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said
'faster horses.'" While "the customer is always right," they may not
always be asking for the right solution. This is where innovation comes
in. Innovators are able to see what their customers actually want,
rather than what they are asking for--which usually reflects what your
competitors are already offering.
A better approach is to anticipate your customer's challenges, by
identifying patterns in customer behavior and paying attention to the
differences in local, regional and global customer needs and desires. As
you identify these patterns, take action to develop a solution that
will meet unmet needs and deliver it to the customer. The key takeaway
here is that customers often don't understand the value of a new
offering until they see it.
Developing a better understanding of your customers will help you
identify areas for improvement in your business model and give customers
what they really want at the price they are willing to pay. That's the best way to get a leg up on your competitors.
Please send us your thoughts at karlandbill@avondalestrategicpartners.com.
Associate Lindsay Comstock contributed to this article.
SOURCE: www.inc.com
No comments:
Post a Comment