Are you making the most of happy customers?

Ask any business what’s important and the answer should be fulfilling the customer’s needs. Providing what the customer wants, where and when they want it, and at a price they’re willing to pay ought to be the key to success.

Of course it’s not quite that easy, and first you need to know the answers to all these questions.  Surprisingly very few businesses bother to try and find out.

In a recent survey conducted by askten.co.uk, only 50pc of businesses in the UK actually bother to gather any customer feedback at all. Less than a quarter do it by any formal means – the rest relying on customers to tell them what they think.  Sadly this may not work as their customers often won’t tell them – they’ll just go elsewhere: another recent TEN survey shows that only one in three consumers bothers to provide feedback frequently – for everyone else it’s either just occasional (probably when they’re really pleased or really angry) or never. This suggests that around 75pc of businesses in deciding what to offer to whom and how to promote themselves are relying on guesswork.

Also surprising is the fact that only around half the companies surveyed measure the effectiveness of their marketing. Which means that the other 50 per cent have no idea how much of their budgets they are wasting and which, if any, strands of their marketing activity are actually effective.

In today’s highly competitive market place it is ever more critical to deliver exactly what the customer wants, in the way he wants to buy it. Apart from anything else, someone else may have thought of providing the same thing to your target customers.  Furthermore, they may have done so in a way that better matches what your customer might want. Your competitor may even be offering something inferior at a higher price and still winning the business – and that may be about nothing more than better marketing.

Alternatively, it could be about the process by which they are supplying the customer.  Marketing and selling involves understanding the process through which the customer goes on their way to making a purchase, and thereafter.

It’s necessary to understand how this process works, right back to where the customer is becoming aware that they need something and starts looking for a solution. In many cases, and particularly in complex services, one of the most powerful advertising media is word of mouth.  If a friend or trusted colleague recommends something, whether it’s a holiday destination, airline, mechanic, decorator, shop or IT specialist, we’re likely to use that as one of our main (or possibly only) sources of information.

Recommendations cut out a lot of work and uncertainty in the buying process. Thus they can create huge short cuts in selling, cutting out much of that tedious networking, lead generation and prospect qualification business. Obviously, for recommendation to work, you need satisfied customers.

As we get to this point, we need to know that what we’re offering is something that the customer wants (or can be persuaded) to buy.

You’ll be getting some of this right, otherwise you wouldn’t be in business. But are you getting it right all the time?  Are you losing potential business because the process through which your customers would like to go doesn’t match the process you follow? Are you spending your marketing money wisely? Is the offer you’re trying to sell to the customer what they’re actually prepared to buy?

These are big questions and the answers can spell the difference between success and failure. There are a number of ways of getting these answers. The first is experience.  Unfortunately experience requires patience and is what happens while you’re waiting for success. This is not a foolproof method – lots of experienced people still get it wrong.  The next is guesswork – also not foolproof.

Fortunately the third method is quite good and surprisingly cost-effective, particularly when compared to the previous two. It’s called “asking the customer”.

Customers are quite happy to tell you what they think – what’s troubling them, what they’d like, where they’d go to find out about it, what they don’t want, where they want to buy stuff and how much they’ll be prepared to pay for it. They’ll also let you know what they think of you and whether they’d recommend you.

Finding out is fairly simple – just ask your customers to take a short survey after you’ve completed the transaction. You’ll be able to use this information continuously to improve your offer and the way you market it.

There are other good reasons for asking customers what they think. They’ll probably like you more for asking and be pleased that you did.  It reminds them of you and how well you treated them. Asking if they’d recommend you might just prompt them to do so.

Finally, if you’re getting good results from your customer satisfaction measurement, you can publish these as a convincing, virtual word of mouth recommendation – your customers will be recommending you to everyone who reads your web site or marketing material.

For more information visit askten.co.uk, email mail@askten.co.uk or call +44 333 666 1010. For an interview with William Montgomery please contact Melissa Neill at HYPR on +44 845 347 0027 or email her at melissa@hy-pr.co.uk.