Survey Your Customers – The Customer Survey
As we start a New Year, it is time to survey your customers and find out what they are looking for in 2011. When you survey your customers, no matter whether you provide a service or sell products, you must be focussed on finding out what their current greatest pain is. The Customer Survey process must focus on your customers’ needs, not yours. The skill in creating a successful business in 2011 will be in how well you establish what people are looking for in the market that you provide a service to.
I recently ran a business weekend for the Tigrent Organisation where we had 40 would-be and existing business owners. During these three intense days I explained to the students that when you carry out a customer survey, the one thing you must do is ask very specific questions. The questions must focus the answers to give you a specific result – one that tells you exactly what service or product you need to be expanding on or introducing to your sales. The Customer Survey should be focussed on the product, service and market that relates to your business and should include questions similar to these:
- What would you love to be able to buy (or have as a service) but simply cannot get hold of right now?
- What do you look for most in this product or service?
- What makes you buy or use the product or service that you currently use?
- Where do you buy your product/service?
- What are two things that would stop you from using the existing product/service?
The Customer survey ideally should seek to help to indentify what the customer/client does not want in a product/service and also what they do want. Look to establish clearly the factors that really influence customers to buy the products that they are currently using. Be open to learning and as you spot patterns in the customer survey, you can then create and re-define what services and products you will introduce. Then eventually you can go back to the people that completed the survery and offer them a special introductory discount on the new product that fits their exact needs.
