Checking Out Who Your Customers Are
A fresh look at customers starts with the ones you enjoy seeing – those who regularly purchase goods or services from you. But sometimes, knowing what something is not can be just as important as knowing what it is. You can find out as much about your own business and best customers by observing the other kinds of customers out there – the customers who are difficult, the customers who are gone and the customers whom you never had.
The good customer
Good customers are the ones who bring a smile to your face, the ones you like serving, the ones who appreciate you, the ones who keep you in business. They’re the customers you want to keep coming back time and again. To keep all those good customers happy, however, you may need to know more than the fact that Tom likes Chinese food, Mary has a weakness for chocolates and Harry loves red ties.
The bad customer
‘A bad customer? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’ you ask. ‘How can there be such a thing as a bad customer, especially for a customer-orientated company?’ Keep in mind that your initial reaction doesn’t always tell the whole story. Remember that you don’t really define the business that you’re in, your customers do. They place a series of demands on your company and then evaluate how well it performs against those demands.All information details Exipure Reviews
The other guy’s customer
You may think that focusing on customers whom you’ve never had points to another sort of failure on your part, but actually, these people present an opportunity. The fact that you haven’t been able to serve this group gives you a challenge: to find out what your market really thinks is important. Your competitors’ customers are telling you what you’re not. This information is extremely useful, especially when you’re working on the big picture in the early stages of business planning, defining who you are and who you want to serve.More Info About Tamilvilla
Discovering Why Your Customers Buy
Perhaps the most difficult – and useful – question that you can answer about your customers is why they buy what they buy. What actually compels them to seek out your products or services in the marketplace? What’s important to them? What are they really looking for?
Determining motives
Motives are needs that have been awakened and activated, so to speak. Motives send people scurrying into the marketplace, searching for products or services that can fulfil a particular need. Motives aren’t always what they seem to be. Here are a few examples:
Monitoring complaints
Discovering why your customers won’t buy again is as valuable as knowing why they buy in the first place. One terrifying statistic is that 98 per cent of complaints never happen. People just don’t get round to making the complaint, or worse still, they can find no one to complain to. You would have to be a hermit never to have experienced something to complain about, but just try finding someone to complain to at 8 p.m. on a Sunday at Paddington Station and you get a fair impression of how the Gobi Desert feels.
Finding Out How Your Customers Make Choices
How do customers make choices in the marketplace? The most important thing to remember is that customers decide to buy things based on their own view of the world – their own perceptions of reality. Few customers buy without thinking. Instead, they bring their perceptions of the world into a decision-making process that (ideally) leads them to purchase your product or service instead of other options.
Realizing that perceptions are reality
Customer perceptions represent the market’s world view and include not only what your customers think of your products and services, but also how they see your company and view your competitors.
As customers turn to the marketplace, they confront a mindboggling array of competing products. Many variables influence your customers as they evaluate their choices: advertising, endorsements, reviews and salesmanship, not to mention their own gut reactions. You need to know how customers respond to all these stimuli if you ultimately want to earn and keep their business.
Lastly Comment
If you think about your business only in terms of your existing products, for example, you risk losing sight of customer needs that you’ve overlooked – needs that a competitor is no doubt going to satisfy at some point. You also create a short-sighted view of your own strategic choices that can result in missed market opportunities and woefully inadequate business plans.
