#PrayTell: Do you really know your Customers?
The heartbeat and life line of any business is Customers. At Triift Africa, we expose businesses to opportunities to grow as well as place value through customer retention and a positive customer experience. Understanding the needs of the customer cannot be overtly underrated in the delivery of goods and services as a business owner
How well do you understand your customers?
When a business owner engages with the customers, they are able to understand basic touch points for the customers as well as observe bottlenecks and painpoints in the entire customer service experience. This helps the business owner troubleshoot along the customer journey with a bid to improving the overall customer service experience.
Walking in the shoes of a customer and experiencing the process yourself sends a loyalty signal and a sense of belonging to the customer, one that says you are vested in making your business experience better as they go.
The Almighty “Ws” Formula
This clearly speaks to understanding the who, what and when of your business.
Who are the customers; a business owner must be sure of who his customers are; is it individuals or other brands, sometimes, it is both and optimising for those you serve as a business is a way to drive different levels of income to your business.
If your business serves individuals, what is the age range, gender and employment status? If it is brands, what industry does the brands belong to, what is the size of the brand, and the kind of brand?. What does the brand(s) you are servicing aim to achieve with your service? How can you optimise to make them reach that point faster? Through what medium is your product being purchased is it a one on one purchase or virtual i.e online. What type of social media platform are customers using mostly interact with your business? Understanding all of these and even more will give you a better grasp of your customers and help you build with them in mind.
Solicit Feedback
How best can our brand serve you better? Is our brand getting it right? These questions help you get feedback from your customers, and speaks directly to soliciting feedback from a customer that can help your business grow. Keep it conversational, like you really need it, document them and act on them, if possible, keep in touch with your customers to let them know what changes you are making to your business thanks to them. This helps your customers feel like they are a part of this great thing that you are building.
Leverage on brand trends
Being relevant to your network of customers is major keys. Identifying brand trends early, and acting on them from time to time will give you an edge when it comes to positioning your business for your audience. Follow brand trends in your industry through social media to check what people are saying about your business category. Social listening is one of the best ways to have your hands on what people are saying about your brand. Do not hesitate to set up alerts to inform you of search and social trends that you can leverage.
How far can a customer go?
The purchasing power of a customer will determine whether a customer is one you should focus on or not. A premium service for a low budget customer is a wrong move. Knowing what a customer can afford will give you the business owner the opportunity to optimise for different price points to accommodate more customers or to segment them. As a great advice, Focus on those who can afford to buy your product, then build for those who can’t.
Lack of customer understanding makes it difficult for you to effectively prioritize or even meet the needs of its prospective customers. Naturally, customers are less loyal and far less trusting especially with the power of social media which gives them the power to decide if to go for a brand or not without blinking twice. The process of understanding customers requires patience and a conscious observation of the behaviour patterns that drive their actions.
Has this post helped you or given you new lenses to look at your business through? Kindly hit the clap icon as many times as you want (50 claps is not too much!).
What other tips do you engage in your business to keep your customers happy? Let’s keep the conversation going. Follow Triift Africa on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
