To be successful in business, you have to understand your customers’ needs and effectively meet those needs. Doing this requires that you think like your customers, learn what they do and why, and then identify what they truly need to improve what they do through your products or services. Only then can you align your offerings to fulfill those needs.
Key Takeaways
- Customers have many needs, some general and some more specific to their circumstances
- Understanding customer needs helps you provide better products and services, and impacts customer satisfaction
- There are many ways to identify and understand customer needs, including self-reflection, talking to customers, observing their behavior, and conducting market research
What Needs Do Customers Have?
People can have many needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs details a series of needs that are common to everyone, progressing from basic needs (food, water, security) through psychological needs (friends, a feeling of accomplishment) to self-fulfillment needs (achieving one’s full potential).
Additionally, individuals have their own individual needs that might be specific to a time or place. If you want to grab a sandwich for lunch, you need ten dollars in your hand right now – and if you just got done weeding the garden and you have a big date this evening, you need to take a shower.
On the surface, customers might appear to have four basic needs in relation to the product or service you offer:
- A good product or service
- A fair price
- To be treated well (good customer service)
- To feel valued
While it’s true that you must meet all these needs to win the customer’s business, customers have more specific needs than just these four. All customers exist in their own individual circumstances that create specific needs. All industries are different, all markets are different, all locations are different – and these create different needs for different customers. The challenge you face in your business is to identify, understand, and meet those specific customer needs.
Why You Need to Understand Customer Needs
Simply providing a good product or service isn’t enough. What you provide has to be relevant to your customers – it has to meet a specific need, and meet it well. A good product that serves no need exists in a vacuum. Unlike what Kevin Costner’s character said in the movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, that doesn’t guarantee customers will come. They will only come to you if you give them something they need.
IBM research reveals that 76% of consumers expect companies to understand their individual needs. This can lead to higher sales. Deloitte and Touche discovered that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that don’t focus on their customer needs.
Understanding customer needs will make your business better. You’ll produce better products and services that are more tailored to your customer base. You’ll attract more customers, and they’ll be more satisfied. When you understand your customers’ needs – and work to meet those needs – your business will grow.
How to Understand Your Customers’ Needs
What do you need to do to understand your customers’ needs? There are several ways to gain insight into how your customers think and what they need. Some of these methods are detailed in the following video, while some of the most effective approaches are listed here.
Reflect on Your Own Experiences
Sometimes the best way to figure out what your customers need is to put yourself in their shoes. Reflect on your own experiences as a customer, what you went through, your motivations, what you liked, what you disliked, and any difficulties you encountered. Chances are your customers are having a similar experience. Build on what you know to get a better feel for what your customers need.
Talk to Your Customers
If you can’t be the customer, you can at least talk to your customers. Sometimes the best way to understand what your customers need is to simply ask them. Customers can be surprisingly forthcoming, if you just give them the opportunity.
There are many ways you can talk to your customers. Some of the more effective include one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and customer feedback surveys.
Observe Customer Behavior
If you can’t talk directly to customers, you can observe them in action. How do they shop for the items you sell? Do they do research before they buy – and if so, how and where? How many different options do they compare? What causes them to buy? The better you understand what they’re doing, the closer you’ll come to understanding why they’re doing it.
Conduct Market Research
Another effective way “talk” to your customers is via market research. Conduct surveys of existing and potential customers to determine what influences their buying behavior and what motivates a purchase. It is also one the best way to create value for customers.
Analyze Existing Customer Data
You may not need to conduct new market research if you’ve collected essential information about your existing customers. Drill down through your customer data to analyze past surveys, review previous customer interviews, and comb through your customer support logs. Chances are you have a lot of information about your customers already on hand.
Map the Customer Journey
When you’ve gathered information about your customers and potential customers, you can create a customer journey map. This map details each stage of the customer journey and all the individual touchpoints that people go through to become a customer.
Most customer journeys go through five major stages:
- Awareness of your product or service
- Consideration of what you offer vs. what is offered by the competition
- Acquisition of your product or service – that is, making the purchase decision
- Service after the sale
- Loyalty – or lack of – over time
Your customer journey map will help you understand what motivates your customers and how you interact with them throughout the purchasing and post-purchase processes. Use the map to learn about what customers experience, how they make decisions, what pain points they encounter, and more. It’s a great tool for understanding customer needs.
Let the Boom Communications Group Help You Better Understand Your Customers
The Boom Communications Group has provided marketing, advertising, and printing services to more than a thousand small businesses. We can help you identify and understand your customers’ needs and ignite your business growth. Get in touch with us to learn more about how we can work together to provide the right products and services to your customers. Contact Boom Communications today to ignite your business growth!