Your Challenge

Your challenge is to both maintain and develop the value of your existing customer base. No business can afford to stand still.

What Makes A Customer Base Valuable?

If you can answer yes to the following questions, your existing customer base has value.

• Do your existing customers spend money with you?
• Are they happy with the service you provide?
• Have you built up a relationship of trust and rapport?
• Do they come to you for the solutions to their problems?
• If asked, would they recommend or refer you to other people?
• Are they likely to have needs in the future and problems they want solving?
• Would they spend more with you if you could help them?

 

Customer Value – Special Response Checklist

Get specific with your customer sales information.

• Create a list of your main customers.
• How many customers do you have?
• Where do they come from?
• How much does each customer spend with you every year?
• How often does each customers use you?
• What are their particular spending patterns?
• What interests does each customer have in your business?
• What potential does each customer have to spend more with you?

 

How To Use This Information

Once you know the value of your existing client base you have a starting place. Once you have specific customer information you can work out which business building strategy will be most likely to appeal to particular customer groups or individuals. If you think of each new customer having a life time value potential it makes it even more important to value them right from the start, no matter how little they start off spending with you.

8 Finding Out What Existing Customers Value About Your Business

What Is Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback is the information that you get from your customers about the work that you do for them, positive and negative. How do you get yours? There are several different ways in which feedback can be gathered.

• Best and worst selling products/services.
• Repeat business.
• Behaviour and body language observation.
• Questions asked.
• Complaints.
• Verbal comments.
• Conversations with customers.
• Testimonials and letters.
• Recommendations.
• Survey information.

 

Why Is This Important?

It is important to be aware of the feedback you are getting from your customers. This is how you learn about what is and isn’t important to the people you wish to influence. If you are selling something that people want and you are delivering value, you need to know about it!

This is information that you can use to attract more customers. It is also a confidence boost for you if you know how much people value what you offer. You can allow yourself to feel good and very proud of what you are doing. If your business is missing what customers value most, you need to know about that as well. This information can teach you how to make your business more attractive to the people that you value most: your customers.

Your Challenge

Your challenge is to set up a system both to gather and evaluate this information on a regular basis. You need to be open and able to listen to customers’ views. You will need to be prepared to ask and develop questions that are targeted to extract the right information. When asking for customer feedback you will need to be careful about guiding the customer’s mind in the right direction. If you ask ‘What didn’t you like about the service today?’ the response can only be negative. Whereas if you say ‘What did you think about the service today?’ and give a choice of responses, there is a greater chance of a positive result.