What Your Customers (really) Want
In the words of the iconic Spice Girls “Do you know what your customers want? What they really, really, want?”… Ok, we’re paraphrasing a bit there…
But if you’re not collecting feedback throughout the customer journey then how can you be sure what they want?
It can be overwhelming to think about where to start though, so here are a few easy things to get you rolling...
🎤 Start collating anecdotal feedback and train your staff to do it too. Some of your best feedback is going to come at times when you’re not expecting it – so your staff need to be on the lookout for it! Once you have it, don’t forget to share it – it can be used as positive reinforcement for staff, shared testimonials on your website or the basis for a training session
🎤 If you’ve been collecting feedback informally and now you’re ready to start using more formal tools, Survey Monkey is a great place to start – it has a free option, it’s easy to use and once your survey is complete, it will spit out your data in easy-to-read graphs
🎤 If you're not sure what questions to ask, start with this one “on a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend (your business name) to your friends and family”. The data from this question can be used to calculate a Net Promotor Score (NPS) - businesses all around the world use NPS as a metric and it can be a helpful tool to measure how your customers are feeling about your brand in a broad sense. There is some great info and a free calculator here https://lnkd.in/gRZPc7C
🎤 Don’t ask a question if you’re not ready to hear the answer (whatever that might be!). On the plus side, the more you ask your customers, the more you will start to form a hypothesis on what your customers want/need. Then in future research, you can form questions to test that hypothesis.
🎤 Once a customer takes the time to give you feedback, make sure you close the loop – think about who inside your organisation needs to see this information, what actions need to be taken and don’t forget to thank your respondents!
After all, if you don't know what your customers really, really want - how will you design a product/service they really, really need?
If you need some help getting started on your customer research journey, you can find out more here