How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

How well do you know your customers – it’s a question every company should ask itself from time to time. Customers determine your company’s success and a business needs to know what their customers desire if it is to succeed. In the past, we have talked about the ideal client, which was the idea of determining your company’s ideal client with certain characteristics that fit your business style, and this idea is somewhat similar. However, a company’s client base is not entirely composed of ideal clients and thus a company must know its clients in general if the business is to succeed.

Get a Group Perspective

To get an effective understanding of our customers, we must first acknowledge our own personal bias. Whether you realize it or not, we all have a bias when looking at our customers, and therefore you should assemble all members of your team in order to thoroughly understand your customers. Everyone has a different outlook and odds are that not a single person is exactly right; rather, it is the group outlook on your clientele that will give you the best understanding. The combination of opinions will allow you to develop a better idea of your customers and will then help you in shaping your business plan to match these clients.

Talk to Your Customers Personally

There is no better way to understand your customers than by talking to them personally. By speaking to them, you will be able to get a rough understanding of what their priorities and desires are, while simultaneously boosting the human presence of your company. It may be easier to hire a low paying worker to manage your phones, but in the end your business will not learn and grow as much. Devoting time to customer relations may not be feasible for some business owners, but in a small market this time management can actually pay dividends which leads us to our next point.

Understand Your Market

The market in which you are working in will determine who your clients are and what they place a high emphasis upon. If you are working with a small market then odds are you should spend more time personally communicating with clients in order to boost referrals and customer satisfaction. If your business operates in a larger market share then maybe you will spend less time on client satisfaction and more time on lowering operating costs. Your market will dictate who your customers are, and, as a result, should also determine how you treat these customers and run your business.

Every business has a different customer base and should operate differently in return. Your customers determine the success of your business and should thus determine the way in which you run your business. You may have 10 clients or 10,000, but regardless you should always be looking to satisfy them with what they want whether it be low prices or excellent customer service or something else.

John Zahn is a Co-Founder of Omnibeat. As a long-time business owner with an interest in technology, he strives to help businesses embrace new technology while sharing their unique story online. John loves helping business owners “Catch the Wave of Digital Marketing.”

Omnibeat is the digital marketing outsource solution for growth in Los Alamitos and the greater Long Beach area.