Keep your finger on the pulse of your customer

As it is often said, it is easier to keep a customer than create a customer, so why not focus some energy on further pleasing your existing customers. Use the relationship you already have with them to create programs that will convince them to buy more of the same or to develop additional products or services that will interest them.

Once you have a customer — particularly a good customer — you should work hard to keep them. Happy customers will continue to buy, and will spread the word. Unhappy customers will stop buying — and may not tell you why — and they will spread the word, to your detriment.

Therefore, it is extremely important to understand what customers want and what they think about you. You should consider the opinions of current and past customers as well as non-customers. Asking for customer feedback is a good way to get information, but you should have a plan — not only how you are going to collect the information, but also what you are going to do with it.

For example, in many retail stores, it is not uncommon to ask customers “did you find what you were looking for today?” at the cash. If you ask the question, are you prepared to deal with a “no” answer? At this point, the customer is ready to put their money down to buy. Is this the right time to interrupt the process to redirect them? Although your goal may be to increase their satisfaction (and increase your sales), can staff manage to deal with a diversion? Even if it is not necessary to return to the store floor based on the feedback, do you have a means to collect the answers that the customer provides?

With this in mind, the first step in collecting customer feedback is to think about what you want to know. You may want to learn more about your customers and their needs and/or habits, or you may want to get a better understanding of what they think of your organization and the product or services you provide.

Regardless of the focus, you also need to think about how you are going to use the information you collect. For example, open-ended questions can provide a depth of information but the answers can be difficult to categorize, making it hard to identify trends. Anecdotal feedback is useful, but hard numbers are much easier to interpret.

Collecting customer information and feedback is an ongoing activity. It is important to keep asking some of the same questions so you can track results over time. And it is important to act on the feedback. Take your customers’ pulse both before and after any changes so you can see the impact of your decisions.

The whole point is to improve your business, so be sure to focus on collecting data that will help you make better decisions. And start with easy changes that will have the greatest impact.