Get Involved with Your Customers

How do you determine your customers’ needs and expectations? If you are a customer-focused company, this is probably a part of your business plan already. Many companies, will all good intentions, ask their customers what they need, make the improvements on their products, and anticipate customer satisfaction.

This seems like good customer service on the surface, but two questions arise. First, do your customers really know what they want? Think about yourself as a customer for a moment. While you’re driving your car, popping bread into the toaster, checking your wristwatch, or listening to your mp3 player, are you enjoying how these products benefit you, or are you thinking about how they could be improved? If you were asked, would you have an immediate answer, or would you have to make something up? Generally speaking, customers are satisfied with the purchases they make.

A second question is this: Who knows your product best, you or your customer? You do. You know your potentials and limitations. You know your strengths and weaknesses. You probably have ideas for product development that your customers haven’t even though of. Simply offering what your customers have asked for does not mean that they will buy it.

So then, how do your go about determining what your customers’ wants and needs really are? One of the best ways you can do this is to learn your customers' business. How do they use your product on a day-to-day basis? What tasks are they doing when they use it? How could your product contribute even more to improve their lifestyles or their businesses? Simply asking them can’t provide this information. The more you know about them through close contact and observation, the better you’ll learn and be able to serve their needs.

Here’s an example. I recently had a client ask me to video and comment on all twenty participants in a two-day business presentation skills program. Although certainly possible, this would have taken up a lot of valuable training time and left most of the trainees sidelined while one was receiving comments. In the long term, such a program would have low impact and only moderate value. By working with the company and discovering their key objectives, however, I was able to single out the six sales representatives that they needed to develop, allow them to present, and use the rest of the participants to provide feedback and review. Everyone benefited, and the company’s needs were met.

Of course, asking your customers what they need is still a valuable practice that you can continue. For you to best meet their real needs, however, be involved. The more you about how your customers use your product, the more your solutions will target their needs.