What Your Customers Want In 2021
To be honest, an average customer either doesn’t know what he wants or wants too much. The struggled to satisfy customers is real, but if your customers can get the 5 items below from you, you can say you’re doing well enough.
Let’s dive in.
1. Fair Price:
Have you ever gotten home from the market and then taken a long look at an item you bought and wondered why you paid so much for it? You start to regret not bargaining harder and insisting on a lower price. It has happened to me and it sucks.
If you have felt that way before, it’s because nobody wants to be cheated of their hard earned money, especially not a broke person — and that’s over 70% of Nigerians.
So when a customer decides to buy from you or pay for your services, they secretly want the highest quality at the cheapest cost possible. The only way to give them a sense of having made a good buying decision is to sell to them at a fair price.
So what exactly is a fair price and who determines it?
A fair price is the amount your customer is willing to pay, and that you’re willing to accept, and that is a FAIR estimate of the value of your product or service in the market. To break it down, e mean say the price must pay you, e must pay the customer and the product or service must carry weight/level wey reach the price wey you sell am. When a customer wonders if they should have haggled harder at the market, it’s often because they feel the price they paid is not fair, that they could have gotten the same product or service at a cheaper price elsewhere.
As a small business, you don’t want to make customers feel that way. I know it’s impossible for everyone to sell at the same price because of so many factors, but a fair price is a range, not a fixed amount.
I should add though, that the price you set depends on your target audience and your business model. If your customers are mainly rich people who can afford to pay more, it’s okay to sell to them at a price that’s higher than the fair market price. The determinant here is not the price in the market, it is their ability to pay.
The side effect is that you will have less customers. So if your model is to have a small group of high paying customers, you’re good to go, you’ll make big profits per customer but from a small customer base.. But if your business requires a big customer base, you’re better off selling your product/service at a fair market price, that way you accumulate small profits to big money.
2. Honesty & Good Communication
Customers don’t want you to lie to them and they don’t want you to hide important information from them, they want to be able to trust you.
A lesson I’ve learned in business is that, if you cultivate trust first, you’ll get loyalty back. Honesty is rare in today’s world, and customers know that, so when they find one person who is very honest with them, they’ll be loyal to that business. And what’s more, they will be willing to pay more! Yes, when customers trust you, they don’t mind paying more for your products and services.
How to cultivate trust?
- Don’t steal from them: Yes, people steal materials, information and all sorts of things from their customers and that’s a turn off.
- Don’t lie to them: Especially about availability, deadlines and the quality of what you’re selling. Also, if there’s a challenge, don’t keep them in the dark. Come clean and update them on the status of things regularly. If you insist on lying, please read this article first, maybe he can change you mind since I can’t. I don’t know about you, but half truths (especially if information left out can influence the listener’s understanding/decision) are also lies.
3. Good Customer Experience
There’s a joke in the product design world, and it’s that “nobody reads the manuals”. People figure out how to use a product in the process of using it, and that’s why you have to be intentional in creating a good process that doesn’t stress out your customers and that also eliminates the chances of them making a mistake while transacting business with you.
Left to customers, they would like a stress free process every time they patronise you, and that’s exactly what you should give them.
It requires that you make a plan to accommodate the different needs of your customers and gently nudge them towards the decision you desire them to make — without stressing them.
A few scenarios to understand this better.
Assuming you get a lot of customers at your physical store and you’re the only one to attend to them, it means they stay at your shop for longer periods than they ordinarily should. How to solve the problem and improve your service experience? You could provide comfortable chairs and employ an assistant, so that people get attended to faster, and some can sit while they wait. While at it, you could allow them to buy from home and you deliver to them, so they don’t have to come to the store. Voila.
What if your customers are mostly educated young people, how can you improve your service delivery to them? A good step might be to allow bank transfer or POS payments for your business, and then they won’t have to worry about first withdrawing cash before coming to your store.
Good user experience makes your customers feel good when they use your service or product, and it starts from the moment they contact you. They have to feel welcome and immediately notice your intentional effort to make their business transaction as seamless as possible.
For a small business, you should ask the following questions to determine if you have good service experience:
- Can my customers contact me easily to make enquiries or lodge a complaint during work hours?
- How long do I keep my customers waiting for, before replying to their messages?
- How fast is my service delivery?
- Do my customers complain about missed deliveries or missed deadlines?
- Is there a particular process that customers usually skip when trying to do business with me?
- Can customers pay me easily?
- Do I have a policy /process that stress my customers?
The list is not exhaustive. The point however, is that customers must enjoy the process of doing business with you, if they don’t enjoy doing business with you, they won’t come back if they can get better services elsewhere. Check this article for tips on how to create a good customer experience.
4. Excellent Customer Service and Support
This is the single most important thing your customer wants from you.
Even if you meet all their other needs, shitty customer service and support might make you lose customers.
So what does excellent customer support and service translate to?
You’re correct if you think it means responding to complaints from your customers, but that’s just one part of it. It involves caring about your customers enough to think about problems they might encounter in using your product/service and providing solutions to those, even before they complain about it.
It includes regularly talking to your customers, asking them questions about how you can make their lives easier, sharing information that might help them and showing them ways to get more out of the products/services they paid for.
You might think about it this way:
Let’s say you sell food ingredients and condiments. What would great customer service & support look like?
It would involve things like suggesting different spices to your customers, , helping them make better purchase choices when choosing brand, sharing recipes and cooking tips with them (Seasoning brands do this, don’t they?). Customer support on the other hand would involve responding and providing solutions when they have complaints. For example, if they bought an expired can of baked beans from your store, it would be your job to respond to and resolve that complaint.
Good quality customer support involves listening, listening well, because customers believe they are king. And kings believe they can do or say whatever they like. You have to be patient because customers are usually irate when expressing dissatisfaction or sharing a problem about your product or service.
It might be that they made a mistake, or that they don’t understand how to use your product or service. But it doesn’t matter whose fault it is, you have to stay calm as much as possible, listen carefully to them and identify their major complaints, ask them questions to clarify the information, reassure them that you understand their pain and that you’re working to resolve it in a timely manner (and do resolve it ASAP).
If you cannot resolve a complaint the way they want (for instance, if they’re trying to get a refund on a damaged item they bought from you, but that you believe got damaged after you sold it to them), calmly explain the reasons you can’t resolve the issue and reassure them that you have their interest at heart.
If a complaint is due to an error on your part, acknowledge it and take responsibility. Apologise and promise to fix the problem. While fixing the problem, update them on your progress (especially if it’s a technical or logistics problem such as a mistake in the dress you made for them, or a missed delivery). Always communicate with the customer and show them you care about how they feel.
The truth is, customers know that problems would occur and that you’re human. They don’t expect you to be perfect, but they expect you to care, to solve the problem and to do better next time.
5. Great Value
If you put yourself in the position of a customer you might realize that this is a tad higher on the scale than good customer service. After all, what’s the essence of your listening ear when the earpods your customer bought for you don’t work, and it was the same thing last time they bought a charger from you.
Customers feel they got great value from your service/product if their need is fulfilled and they derive satisfaction from what they paid for. So, if you’re a seamstress, try to get their style right. If you’re a barber, don’t mess up their hairline. If you sell products, be honest about the quality of what you’re selling and always let your marketing match the product.
Finally
Provide workable solutions to customers’ challenges, show them you think for them and care about them, anticipate their needs and meet their demands.
2021 would be good for business, I can tell.
Don’t forget to share with others and leave comments below.
