Surface Ripples

10 Questions To Compete Effectively

Customers come back because they feel important and because a business gives them what they want.

How do you make sure that you keep that business? Here are 10 questions that you should be asking your customers regularly to make sure your business survives and excels at what it does:

1. How long have they been using your business (existing regular customers)?
2. Why do they continue to come to your business (if they’re “regulars”)?
3. How did they hear about your business (new customers)?
4. What do they like about your business?
5. Do they have any “favourite” staff?
6. What does “the competition” do better than you?
7. What do you do better than “the competition”?
8. How have any complaints been handled in the past?
9. What products/services do they think will be important in the future?
10. If there was one thing that could be done better, what would it be?

The answers to these questions can reveal a surprising amount of information about why people come to your business, its strengths and weaknesses, how loyal your customers are (or how good you are at maintaining loyalty) and what future demand may be.

The trick is to be able to:
• Spot “trends” in the information (you need to be asking these questions regularly);
• Extract negative perceptions as well as positive ones.

What your customers tell you may be in line with your views, or may be totally different. The one thing you mustn’t do is ignore it. It is highly valuable strategic and competitive information. People like bankers, accountants and prospective investors or buyers like this kind of detail.

Think about the kind of questions you would like to ask yourself (they may be totally different to the ones above) and then think how you’ll ask them to get the information you need. It could be face-to-face as part of a general chat, or more formally through a “customer survey”. The advantage of the latter is that it allows your customer to be “anonymous” when giving negative feedback. You can hand surveys out to them, or have someone outside the premises (on “neutral ground”) asking the questions.

You may find that you will refine the questions above, or develop different ones. That’s perfectly fine, as the important thing is what works for you. Your best PR machine is happy customers who tell people about your business, “like” it on Facebook, and keep coming back for more. The way to achieve this is to know your customers.

I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.

Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling, Strategy

posted by William Martin @ 20:02