What Do You Need To Know – Special Response Checklist
- What are people buying?
- What do people want to buy?
- What are their service expectations?
- What is really important in terms of product/service delivery?
- What irritates and frustrates people?
Great questions to ask
- When choosing a [your service] what do you look for?
- When buying [your service] what is most important?
- What prompted the decision to use x services?
- What have you found of most value?
- What (if anything) could we do to improve the x service we offer you?
- What do you like about x?
- Which aspect of x do you find of most value?
Depending on whether you are using a written or telephone survey, or holding a one-to-one conversation the way you organise your questions will vary. You may use multichoice, with a range from most important to least important, or leave them open for comments. The important thing is that you make it easy for people to answer the questions when you ask them. Any surveys you do ideally should comprise no more than 10 questions. If you are conducting a telephone survey and you get some really positive statements always ask if you can quote them. This is a very easy and quick way of getting testimonials.
How To Use This Information
A list of what your customers most value about your business can be used to help you create all your marketing messages, your brand, your unique selling proposition, your customer commitment statement, your list of attractive benefits, your website or brochure copy and even your elevator speech. Knowing what customers value is invaluable to you.
9 Seeing Your Business Through The Customers’ Eyes
What Does This Mean?If you want to influence your customers you have to understand and relate to them. When you see through your customers’ eyes you experience the world from a different perspective. Imagine you have taken your customers’ glasses and you are looking at your business through those lenses. What do you see? Do you suddenly see it all differently? You should. Many business owners find this exercise extremely difficult to do. Be careful that you don’t get so close to your own business by running it day-to-day that you stop being able to see things from your customers’ point of view.
Why This Is Important
It is important to switch perspectives from time to time. Making decisions about shop layout, website design, customer communication processes and more becomes a lot easier when you are able to imagine yourself as the customer. You will avoid the classic pitfalls that many people make when they make elements of their service over complicated and confusing. Most people these days want things simply, quickly and easily. If it is complicated, slow or difficult your potential customers will go somewhere else. This is especially true of the internet age which has brought with it choice and speed. Very few have the patience to wait.
Your Challenge
Your challenge will be to spend the time taking a look at your business through your customers’ eyes and maintain this perspective for long enough to gain some valuable insights.
What Do You Need To Do? – Special Response Checklist
- Take some time out and close your eyes.
- Think about one of your typical customers.
- Describe that person to yourself.What are they like?How old are they?What typically do they do each day?What is important to them?What are they looking for when they consider buying x?
- Now imagine yourself as this person coming along to your business or finding you on the internet.What do you see?What is your first impression?What do you feel?
- Checkout every individual aspect of your business from this perspective. You can enter your website as a customer, you can use your service as a customer, you can pretend to have a complaint as a customer. You can look at your advertising – any number of things. Look at what goes on in your business through your customers’ eyes.
- Note down the things that you see.
- Try seeing through the eyes of a number of different types of customers.
- Notice what is different and what is similar.