3 Questions for Your Customers to Answer

Being indispensable to your customers is the defining edge between surviving and thriving in this new economy. How would your customers answer these questions about your business? If you are not getting the perfect answer you are looking for, you know where to put your immediate efforts to improving your business in the eyes of your customers.

1. Who is the first organization that comes to the customer's mind in your industry?

99.2% of people surveyed said they will do business with the first company that comes to mind for a product or a service. Customers, either consumer or B2B customers will develop buying habits and resource habits. Once Google dominated Yahoo in searches, they worked to create interactive search pages for people to use as their home pages. Once Google became the default choice for a home page, Yahoo had to find a new service to offer, because they were done as a search engine.
Where are you positioned in your customers' habits? Are you the first choice that comes to mind, or are you the second alternative?

2. How eager are your customers to come in contact with your employees?

Once call centers were relocated overseas, customers began dreading help services because the people on the other end were perceived to have poor command of the language and information the customer needed help on. Companies who created good products were getting their reputation hammered because of the service interaction.

Do your customers dread talking with your employees, consider them a neutral experience, or enjoy the interaction with your staff? The more enjoyment your customers get from your staff the more interaction they are going to want. If you have a fun knowledgeable staff customers enjoy talking with, why are you using an automated phone system that makes it difficult to talk with a real person? Make the customer interaction personable.

3. What makes it worth the effort for your customers to do business with you?

Every buying decision is a choice. Maybe once you were the only competitor in town and now your customers have options closer. Once upon a time you had the most charismatic salesperson working a territory, who no longer works for you. What are you doing to make sure your customers consider you a worthy choice that is worth the effort to do business with you?

Too many businesses rest on their successful history and expect the flow of customers to continue. Nothing stays the same. When a city creates a new retail area, traffic patterns shift. When a competitor creates new technology, the rules of the industry change. When a competitor grows by acquiring other players in the market, you now have a new force to deal with. Companies go bankrupt ignoring these changes.

What changes have happened in your market to cause you to react and increase the reasons why customers should do business with you? Even better, how can you be proactive to maintain your customer base?