Understanding What Your Customers Want

by Jim Sinur

The days of just pleasing the bottom line are over. The power has shifted to the customer and organizations who are slow to realize this are in for a surprise. Enabling a great mobile experience or superb collaboration is appealing, but enterprises need to get into the head of the customer and really understand the moments of truth that happen at customer touch points.

Remember: It costs 4 to 10 times as much to acquire a customer than it does to maintain one.

By the way, your competition is making it easy to switch. In this blog we will dig a little into the seven things customers want.

What the Customer Wants Now and May Demand in the Future:

Wants You to Know Them:

No longer can you just interact with a customer online or over the phone in the way that you want and have them be satisfied. Using analysis of their past behavior, you should learn how to service your customers with a great experience now and predict what they might want in the future. This goes far beyond cross selling and up selling, though this should be the prize. Winning the customer involves creating an excellent user experience, using your knowledge of your customers to inform that experience, and leaving them with a feeling of “You made my day.” If you don’t. somebody else will.

Wants a Painless Interaction:

You just can’t push customers to weirdly designed voice recognition (VR) menus that name your departments (billing, technical support, and online experience). Customers want support in their lingo, i.e. “I have issues with your product/service” or “I don’t understand why I have to pay this now” or “Your competition has a better offer” or “Why am I getting all these offers from you?” While the smart digital assistant is a ways off, these unfriendly implemented VR menus have to go.

Wants Fast Turnaround:

Your customer does not have time to navigate a complicated user experience or wait in line to get a single-minded specialist with a script. They are under pressure to get things done as fast as possible and you do not have the right to steal their time, hoping they calm down before someone attempts to deal with their issue or transfer them to the right person. Patience is a virtue that modern business seems to want to obliterate. Remember: customers do not necessarily have only one thing to accomplish with your organization and they don’t respect your departmental stove pipes.

Wants Complete Visibility:

The idea of only giving status when you think it’s right is no longer acceptable. Have you ever tried to refill a prescription that needed a doctor’s authorization? All you know is either it works or it doesn’t. If something goes wrong, you have no data to resolve it. The pharmacy blames the doctor and the doctor, who is not rewarded for refill authorizations, blames the pharmacy. With the proper visibility up and down the value and supply chains, customers will be well informed and can help you resolve things with the expected outcomes are not coming in time.

Wants You to Beat Expectations:

It is no longer good enough to solve my immediate need, because it is probably boring at best and infuriating at the worst. Organizations have the opportunity to make the customer experience better than great. Imagine adding some entertainment options to an online servicing opportunity that leverages immediate rewards and maybe a gaming or a virtual reality experience. This would please a number of your younger prospects and customers while getting ready for their future demands of an engaging experience.

Wants a Feeling of Wellbeing:

Nobody wants to be treated as a revenue annuity for your organizations, yet this happens all the time. What is the sense in making people feel used so that you get a great bonus or an increased stock price. How about finding ways of making them feel valued and respected?

Wants You to Care About Them:

While real business is based on buyer beware, why make it easy to leave your organization? Unless you are a sole source or a monopoly, you really need to pay attention to your customers and care for them.

Net; Net:

There is more to your digital customer experience than providing mobile access. The customer’s journey needs to be understood in light of touch points. What are you doing to your customers? Are you driving them away or are you working all of your assets to please them? This is a huge change that digital brings.