Business Media Club blog: Do customers really matter most in your business?

05 Jul Business Media Club blog: Do customers really matter most in your business?

…And, if not, why they should

Ask most businesses if the customers comes first and the answer is always ‘yes’.

But drill down deeper and often that isn’t the case.

For starters, too many of us are poor at acquiring customers – often opting for a blunderbuss approach and spreading fire far and wide at the expense of a more focused, up close and personal line that may glean longer lasting results.

To paraphrase The Who, most marketing seems aimed at winning customers ‘anyway, anyhow, anywhere you choose’.

Then there’s a lack of foresight and planning, led by a failure to view your business outside in and an inability to communicate the facets people want from the service we supply. Getting your value proposition right, whether it is relieving pains or creating gains, is critical to new business acquisition.

Finding the right words and images helps but so too does a detailed understanding of your target customer – their wants and needs and how you can build a relationship with them.

Getting to know them can make a massive difference. Better still, an understanding of the values that will not only help win them but also keep them and, indeed, turn them into advocates and referrers, who are almost evangelical about telling others about how good you are.

Start by putting a price on it. Calculate the value of a lifetime repeat customer rather than single short-term exchanges. You may be pleasantly surprised. From there you can work out how to make them feel special and focus on how you can offer your version of VIP treatment from the start – a service they’ll appreciate and you’ll enjoy providing.

Hang on though, doesn’t everyone deserve excellence? Didn’t we say all customers matter – not just the new ones but existing customers who are our lifeblood? No one likes to be taken for granted and few things feel more insulting than lots of wooing, cooing and offers made to potential new customers that are inaccessible for the seemingly ‘ordinary’ rank and file.

See how readily the language and mindset can slip once you’ll pulled them in? What happened to the exceptional service we spoke about? Maybe if you review the lifetime value of your customers every so often you’d sharpen up your act?

For all customers, try to see things through their eyes by creating an intuitive feel to your marketing – from making it easy to sign up or buy to providing accessible, essential information and creating a good overall feel to your communications whether it is you connecting with them or people visiting your premises, website or social media.

Like life itself, a customer journey should be a pathway they can safely meander with the inevitable twists and turns that can occur but always feeling assured they are in safe hands.

That’s the challenge facing all businesses – providing a positive experience by holding our customers’ hands through a lifetime journey – winning them, being as faithful and loyal to them as we hope they will be to us and rewarding them with such an exceptional service they can’t wait to tell their friends and colleagues.

How to Shape Great Customer Experience Pathways is the theme of July’s Business Media Club meeting on Friday, July 30 (10am-midday), repeated on Thursday, August 5 (2-4pm).

To book, visit our Eventbrite page for this webinar. For further information about the Business Media Club visit our dedicated club page.