It is thrilling to know you can take the mystery out of why your customers choose you.
One thing that every business enterprise, whether for profit or non-profit, has in common is customers. If there are people who want to take what you have to offer, you have customers. They may go by a variety of names, for example:
- Lawyers call them clients
- Bloggers call them readers
- Doctors call them patients
- Schools call them students
- Libraries call them patrons
No matter what you call them if they want what you have to offer, that makes them customers. Most business enterprises want to either increase the number of customers they serve or maintain their current customer base. An important part of increasing customers or maintaining customers is finding out why customers select you. After all, for the most part, your customers could go anywhere, but they have chosen to come to you.
There are a great number of ways to take the mystery out of why your customers choose you. These ways include:
- Customer surveys, both formal and informal
- Analysis of customer buying habits
- Statistical analysis
- Industry research
Customer surveys – one of the easiest ways to find out why your customers choose you is to simply ask them. This method is known as a customer survey and can be formal or informal in nature. With formal surveys, customers are called or sent survey forms to complete and return to your business. These surveys can be professionally prepared or done in-house via things programs like Survey Monkey. Informal surveys involve simply asking customers at the beginning or end of a transaction why they chose your business over all others.
Analysis of buying habits – this means you look at what your customer buy and when they buy it. When you sell products, this is easy to see. You look at what leaves the shelves and what stays. When you sell services, what services do your customers ask you to perform? If you are a blogger, what kinds of articles are your readers reading, what links are they clicking on when they visit your blog. For a school, what classes are students requesting and which classes lack students?
Statistical Analysis – this method involves looking at your numbers. Now, this means you must pay attention to the numbers for your business operations.What brings cash in the door. When do you make money? What causes an increase in customers? If you have not been convinced before now to keep track of important numbers relating to your business, perhaps the desire to keep or increase customers will give you the push you need to get on top of your numbers.
Industry Research – if you do not have surveys, research of your own or numbers to find out why your customers are your customers, do some industry research. Almost every industry has a list of numbers somewhere detailing who buys what, when and why. Information about customers in your industry can help you understand customers in your business. Keep in mind that you can start your customer retention or increase efforts with industry research while building a research database of your own.Do not operate your business wondering why your customers/clients/patients/students/readers come to you. Take time to find out why. When you know why people come to you instead of your competitors you will know how to make them happier. As a result will be able to do a better job at whatever it is that you do. In other words, knowing what makes your customers happy will make you happy.
In conclusion, it is thrilling to know you can take the mystery out of why your customers choose you. So, the question for you this thrilling day is, what are you going to do to figure out why your customers choose you?