Have you ever consider what are your customers’s need before your design a product or service or before you deliver it to them?
It is very important to learn how to empathize with them. It is remarkable how often entrepreneurs fall in love with their product or service and forget what their the customers’ needs. In order to be objective, you have to step back from your daily business routine, and carefully research what your customers really want.
What would attract them in order to make them come back again and again and ignore your competition?
There is no easy answer for that. But if I get rid off my “hat as businesspeople ” and put on my ” hat” as a customer instead , I honestly appreciate quality, reliability,convenience, friendliness, cleanliness, straight looking eyes and exceptional customer service.
Many entrepreneurs and marketers fail to understand their customers. And this is a great and big mistake. If you cannot put yourself in your customers’ shoes, it’s not easy to understand what they want and how to deliver it to them.
The answer for this, is EMPATHY.
When you empathize with your customers, you can craft and design great products and services, you can spead your great marketing message in order to be aligned with them. The fact is that if you want to have loyal customers, you have to show them that you’re a business that cares about them and responses to their needs.
Understanding What Your Customers Want
Understanding is the basis in order to empathize with your customers. When you put yourself in their shoes, it is easy for you to understand what they’re looking for. It is also crucial to not only think about what they want, but also what your customers don’t want. Try to imagine your customers’ fears and concerns, in order to address them before your customers have a chance to worry or object.
Listen Listen Listen
Do not make any assumptions. In order to really understand your customers, you need listen them carefully. Listen to customer feedback about your company, as well as the conversations they have online.
It is quite easy to explore what are your customers’ thoughts and feelings through blogs, blog comments, forum postings, and social media sites. Even better, you can directly ask them to take a few minutes to give you feedback. Online surveys are a great tooll to use and incredibly easy to conduct these days. There are free tools, such as Survey Monkey, which walk you through it step-by-step.
Do not look past Customer Complaints
You can learn great empathy lessons when you deal with customer service problems and complaints. The way a company responds to customer complaints is critical. You should start by acknowledging the issue, and before trying to fix the problem, let them know that you understand how they feel.
There are certain guidelines you can follow:
- Take the complaint seriously.
- Listen and make sure you understand the essence of the complaint.
- Ask questions in order to understand thoroughly the problem
- Show the customer you have listened and understood
- Keep it impersonal and Don’t argue
- Don’t get annoyed
- View the complaint as a challenge to be solved jointly.
What are the motivation that your customers’ have and how they make buying decisions.
It is rather important to know what drives and motivates your customers. Go beyond the traditional customer demographics, such as age, gender, race, income and geographic location, that most businesses collect to analyze their sales trends. Look through their pain, what they gain from your business that is unique, learn whether your business is unique among your competition and what exactly make them buy from you.
What are the real reasons customers buy your product instead of a competitor’s.
If you want to take true feedback on your products and your company, ask your customers. Don’t lose time on making assumptions. You’ll be surprised how honest people are when you ask how you can improve your service.
If you’re really brave, try asking a few of the customers after they leave the premises what they like and dislike about the competitors’ products and services.
You are a Customer Too
As you are a customer too to really put yourself in your customers’ shoes, you have to think like a businessman when you’re serving them as a business, and like a customer when you’re trying to solve their problems.
The persons that matter more for your business survival, are your customers. It takes time, training, thorough education of customer service and customer experience matters that will help you resonate with them and offer them the best you can.
Business Strategist & Coach
Managing Partner @ AtlasConsulting
CEO @AtlasHub
Don’t keep it secret! Feel free to spead the word! After all, it’s free 