Have you noticed that there seems to be something different about your customers of late?
In fact, have you noticed that everything is different about your customers lately? Current concepts of your business’ relationships with its customers can be thrown out the window, with ‘old’ relationship values supplanting them. There is a new (or should we say a return to the old) reality you must face or risk losing customer relationships if you do not.
Here are some things you should know about the ‘new’ customer reality:
- Their minimum expectations are higher than before. Today’s incredible innovations are tomorrow’s minimum expectations. With each innovation, each enhanced service delivery, each product improvement the bar is raised another notch. The ‘crazy’ ideas that broke the rules yesterday are expected standards of performance today
The new reality is that we live in the information age – an age where you find yourself living in the fishbowl. Your offerings are competing with virtual competitors and your customers can tap into them, interrogate them, and draw comparisons with you at the touch of a button – from anywhere in the world.
- Quality is an entry-level factor. Product quality is no longer a competitive factor. It is now just a single factor in the whole concept of value. It is expected! Everyone brings a quality product or service to the marketplace.
- Customers look for the total experience. People don’t just buy products anymore. They buy an experience. The whole experience of doing business with a company is much more than simply the product anyone buys – it’s about the experience the buyer has as the owner of the product or service. You must change the weight you give to the importance of the customer’s total experience with your business. Service and experience are the primary competitive factors you must address.
- The Customers make the decisions. You need to make the conscious decision to let your customers make up the rules – they already do anyway! If you aren’t willing to play by those rules, you just won’t be able to play at all.
- Do you know what your customer’s expectations are? It’s hard to know what their expectations are unless you have a close relationship with them. You often hear companies claim that they strive to “exceed their customer’s expectations”. Do you have an idea how incredibly high your customer’s expectation are? Exceeding customer’s expectations is a very powerful goal – if you remember that you do not decide if you’ve exceeded their expectations – they do that!
- Your customers are not yours for life. No business today automatically has “customers for life”, which is a big change from the way things used to be 40 years ago. Some businesses, almost by nature, seemed to be able to hold onto their customers without even really trying. Today, customers feel they can find whatever you’re selling somewhere else, for the same price or better – they are right!
- Your customers compare you to everything. Every company benchmarks, but most only benchmark themselves against others in their market or competitive environment. Customers don’t think that way – they compare you to everyone they do business with. You need to ‘deliver on time’ all the time! If someone out there provides the level of service they want, they’ll want you to give them that same level, regardless of whether your business supplies different products or services to the ‘other’ business.
Here comes the acid test. If you want to gain some insight into how your customers have changed and toughened over time, think of yourself and what you want as a customer, and then answer these 10 questions:
- Are you a tougher customer than you were five years ago?
- Are you a more informed and more educated buyer than you were five years ago?
- Are you more likely to complain on the spot if you experience a problem?
- Do you demand better service than you used to?
- If you do not receive the service you want, are you more likely to ‘fire’ that business and never come back?
- Are you more likely today to act such as writing or calling a company’s management with a complaint?
- Do you tell more people today about companies that you have experienced problems with?
- Do you take “no” for an answer or are you more likely to go up the chain of command until you get satisfaction?
- Do you demand more value for the money you spend than ever before?
- Do you feel like you have choices as to who you do business with, and that you will exercise those choices if you don’t get the service you want?
You’re tough yourself, aren’t you? Your customers are at least as tough as you are!
Success in business is all about getting the business fundamentals right … and the actions you take!
QUOTATION:
All salesmen will do well to remember that no one wants anything that someone else is trying to “get rid of”.
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