I Was Advised To Ask This Question?

[rr151]

I was advised to ask my best customers this question...Is this a good or bad idea...Any comments?

Does anybody out there ask your customers these kind of questions.

Here is the question:

What’s one thing we could have done better to improve your experience with us?

I also found this quote by Mahatma Gandhi that I thought of sharing...RR

A customer is the most important visitor, on our premises.

He is not dependent on us.

We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption on work.

He is the purpose of it.

He is not an outsider to our business.

He is part of it.

We are not doing him a favor by serving him…

He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do it.

[DantheMan]

I highly recommend asking this question.
Can someone give one reason not to?

This will give you an idea if your customers are satisfied with your products, services, employees, relationship with you, optiions for payment, flexibility of communication, etc. Providing a list or a separate question for each area will provide you with an efficient way to track your metrics. A rating system may be helpful in determining how much attention may be needed.

Avoid possibly influencing the answer or response. For example, I bought an automobile recently and the salesperson called a few times asking that I rate his service as excellent. The dealership wouldn't know how I truely valued the service and salesperson benefits from the extremely positive review. The company actually uses this information to promote how satisfied their customers are. Is that a credible way to gain a good reputation? What is your perception of car dealerships?

You probably don't want to change the way you operate due to a few negative responses, however, if everyone's response seems like a complaint, attention may be overdue in that area.

Does one customer always have negative responses? Maybe you can't afford to keep them as a customer.

This isn't the only question you should be asking. Help your customers help you help them. Did that make any sense?

Dan

[added]
I own this and business and I'm not the boss, the customer is. I can be fired in a heartbeat. (Probably a misquote by someone other than myself)

[rr151]

I have found this article on my HD from a course I took on Relationship marketing. I think it adds to the discussion...RR

The Key to Customer Retention,

Before understanding what the key to keeping your customers is, you need to fully understand what customer retention means. Simply put, it means that your goal is to keep your customer’s loyal to you for as long as possible.

Customer retention is a two way street, it involves you as the business owner, and your customer. The business owner needs to demonstrate to the customer that they are worthy of their business. This is done by building a solid relationship that does just this. When you display this correctly the customer responds by remaining loyal and buying your products or services.

So what is the key to customer retention? Your final goal is to keep your customer’s buying from you. To do this effectively you need to set up a solid customer relationship marketing structure in your business. A solid relationship marketing plan will include more than just a basic marketing plan. You are really going to focus on the customer and their wants and desires. Instead of relying on flyers and other traditional marketing methods you want to get your customers to really know, like and trust you.

What this means is that you need to have open lines of communication available with your customers. This can be done in a variety of ways including via your customer service or help desk and by being active on your social media pages. In addition you should think about scheduling regular emails to your customers. These emails allow you to stay in touch, offer tips and advice and keep everyone informed on upcoming sales and new products.

Collecting feedback from your customers is key and it provides you with more information than doing general market research. What better feedback can you ask for than that of your current customers?

Current feedback allows you to see how your company is viewed in real time, not 6 months later. Plus it provides you with the opportunity to launch creative campaigns targeted at your findings. This could really help your business to grow quickly.

By allowing your customers to tell you what they need and want, you can cater to their every wish, pretty much! Any good business owner will understand the importance of creating long term, loyal customers. It is easier to keep a customer than to keep finding new ones.

To interact with your customers visit the places that they do and use the same tools as them. This means adding social media marketing into your mix and don’t forget about mobile networks and tools. When you do this your company will be hanging out where they do, and your name will keep cropping up.

[DantheMan]

It sounds like you had a good answer to the question.
We're you looking for confirmation?
Hopefully someone will see how it could be counter productive to "cater to their every wish".


Dan

[rr151]

I am recovering addict from the buy every shiny object syndrome, which means you purchase every object put in front of you. Then never use it just buy it and it's off to the next offer.

What clicked and changed my thought process was this...Don't stop selling until the buyer stops buying...Alex Jefferys

I now look at these offers differently...What changed? I was enlighten to a better way of looking at these offers. Instead of making the purchase I now look at how they are selling to me as a learning experience.

What type of email is sent? What is the follow up? Do they respond to my email? Are they interested in me as a customer. Are they just trying to sell me or build a relationship with me.

Each marketing guru has a different way...This is one of those situations...RR

[torka]

Another good question to ask your customers:

Would you recommend our business to your colleagues or friends? (and if you can follow up with a "why?" or a "why not?" it can be very informative).

--Torka

[oldbuddy]

Personally if I were asked that question, my reply would be simply, "You did fine, no problems". I would not take the time to delve into my deepest thoughts and provide anything of real value, that is unless you were my brother-in-law.

My approach would be to start with a question that addresses one particular area you are interested in, that could be responded to with a simple yes or no answer. Then if they want to elaborate, it would indicate they are truly interested in helping you, because they are grateful for your service.

Just a thought.

[jeffscott]

Well said for Torka.

It is important to know the users intent and their needs as well as the expectations from the product and services.

[MarketingDoctor]

This kind of question is useful in a couple of situations:

• When you’ve just acquired a new customer and they’ve purchased for the first time — you want to gauge whether their expectations were met or not, and whether those expectations were based on past experiences with other businesses or whether they were based on promises implied (or stated) in your offer.

• When you receive a complaint from a customer — preferably before they stop buying from you.

No doubt there will be other situations, but these are the primary ones.

The real question should be a bit deeper — and directed at ourselves and our employees: what are we teaching our customers to expect? And are we teaching them to give us a chance to make good on anything less than acceptable service?

I'm with OldBuddy… if I'm impressed or disappointed, I’ll tell you. I don’t really want to be bothered with customer service surveys, questions and other in-your-face stuff that can too often be seen as superficial and lip-service only (and that's because experience tells me that too often they are!)

Better to understand and implement the Three Criteria of Fulfilment — which has as its objective to not just keep your customers coming back for more, but to turn them into our most productive, profitable SELLERS.

It's a much safer, easier, better, faster and smarter way of finding, attracting, converting, keeping and DUPLICATING more eager, loyal, profitable, repeat, self-replicating customers!

[MarketingDoctor]

Rick, here’s another Insight Report from my Marketing Insight Series, which you can download free of charge from the link below.

It's only 5 pages, but it adds a whole extra dimension to the article above about The Three Criteria of Fulfilment.

Download link:
http://themarketingdoctor.com.au/get?falsememory/sbif