Oct/090
Do you know what your customers want?
Have you ever had the feeling that a customer was not entirely satisfied?
In the UK we’re famously bad at complaining, but as a perceptive business owner, you will usually know when someone is less than entirely happy with what you’ve sold them.
So what do you do? You try to improve. Bring their drinks faster, present their food better, try not to keep them waiting for their haircut, show up on time to fix their boiler. But, hang on a second, is that what was bothering them?
It’s not always obvious why people use your business instead of your competitors’ and it is more obvious in some industries than in others. Do people come to your pub because you serve the best pint in town or is it because they want to see, be seen and perhaps flirt a little with your other customers? If the beer was their main motivation, they could save money and time by drinking at home. Do people visit your hair salon because they want their hair to be shorter, curlier or more blonde? Or is it because they want to walk back out into the street feeling like a million dollars?
Some businesses are more functional than others, in the sense that they fulfil a more tangible need. For example, restaurants are more functional than bars since hungry people go there to be fed whereas thirst, as we have established, is not usually the key factor in driving people to bars. For the more functional businesses, the way customers want you to make them feel is still very important, but just not so much of a deal-breaker as it can be for the less functional ones.
So whatever your local business, ask yourself what your customer really want. And when they use your business, make sure they walk away with the feelings they hoped for as well as the products or services.
Get this right and your customers will reward you with loyalty and recommendations. How right do you have to get this? It depends on how good your competitors are.
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