Six ways to help you understand the customer's point of view

This advice is taken from the book Details Marketing.

Applicable scenario

For marketers and managers who want to know customers' views on their companies, products and services, they can use these six methods to help them get customers' views.

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First, why should we look at the problem from the customer's point of view?

1. The value of a company depends on its customers.

Oil fields are assets on the books of oil companies, but thousands of years ago, people did not use oil, and oil fields were worthless; ? When people no longer need oil, these oil fields will become worthless again.

Without customers, the company is worthless.

This is why we must manage the company from the customer's point of view.

For example:

The Magellan Fund managed by Peter Lynch has made great achievements. It is based on the customer satisfaction of listed companies that he decides his operation strategy, whether to buy or sell the company's shares.

Judging the value of the company from the customer's point of view rather than the CEO's point of view has brought great wealth to Peter and his investors.

If you can't feel the customer's thoughts, the company will pay a heavy price.

If you and your customers live in two completely different worlds, it is difficult for you to see what they see.

? If you don't feel the pain of customers, you will have absurd ideas, customers will be unhappy and miss market opportunities.

A typical example of not looking at the problem from the customer's point of view:

* Banks open after you go to work and close before you go to work, which brings great inconvenience to people who go to work. People at the bank don't feel it at all.

* ABN Amro has a laborious and time-consuming business list, which will not be handled at noon. At one time, I thought it was because I was always busy at noon. As a result, a cashier replied, because some of our cashiers went out to eat at noon.

* Car bosses don't choose their own cars, don't drive inferior cars, and don't have to drive to dealers for maintenance.

* Executives of running shoes companies don't have to buy running shoes produced by their own companies, but the company will give them away for free. ?

* Dell has established a method to evaluate customer service representatives, and decided the bonus according to the number of calls they receive every day. In this way, the customer service staff will naturally find ways to send the customer away and let him hang up quickly. There are many tricks: pretend that the signal is not good enough to hear, and simply hang up the customer's phone. More often, the most expensive way for the company is to directly change the parts or the whole machine for the customer. In order to solve a problem, customers have to make countless calls and wait for 30 minutes on the phone. Customer satisfaction plummeted, and repeated purchase intention plummeted. ?

* Cox Limited Network Company is different from other companies. It does not encourage the customer service representative in the call center to send the customer away as soon as possible, but encourages the customer representative to patiently help the customer solve the problem when the customer calls for the first time. The performance evaluation of customer service representatives is based on how many problems they have solved rather than how many phone calls they have made.

Second, the customer perspective cannot be fully obtained.

The way of marketing is to see the world through the eyes of customers, that is, to look at the problem from the perspective of customers.

But it is impossible to see things through the eyes of customers. In order to see what customers see, you must not know what customers don't know. ?

But knowing is knowing, and it cannot be erased. What we already know can no longer be unknown. We always know our company and products better than our customers.

Just like crossword puzzles, once you know the answer, it's hard to imagine why others can't solve it.

But we can still take some measures to gain the customer's perspective and help us see our products and services, even the company.

Three or six ways to help you understand the customer's point of view.

The six methods can be divided into two categories, one is that customers need to participate, and the other is that companies only need to participate.

1. Three methods with customer participation

Method 1: Talk to former clients who left you.

Listen to what they tell you and find out why they left you. Unhappy customers won't make you feel warm, but they will let you know a lot.

MBNA Credit Card Company requires executives to spend four hours a month answering customers' phone calls, including those who call to cancel their credit cards. This is much more complete and accurate than the exquisite research report of the research company.

Method 2: Hire customers

At least some salespeople, marketers and even the new CEO should come from customers.

IBM saved the whole company by appointing one of its old customers (Guo Shina) as CEO.

ContainerStore is a company that sells boxes and other storage and organizing supplies. It recruits talents from customers, and employees carry employment cards with them. If they think a customer is suitable, they will persuade him to apply for a job in the company, and the successful recommendation will be rewarded with 500 dollars.

Method 3: Ask your customers to help you manage it. The expert who knows your customers best is the customers themselves.

Maybe you should let your potential customers judge advertisements. ?

Why not let customers choose advertisements? If advertising companies know that housewives will decide whether to choose their advertisements, they will change the way they make advertisements. They will try their best to impress housewives who use washing powder, not the marketing director who buys washing powder advertisements.

Ask their reaction: Will you buy this product? Will you recommend this product to your friends? ?

These questions won't tell you how many people will buy this product or how many people will recommend it, but by comparing the answers of different people, you will probably know which advertisement is good.

2. Three methods that only need your own participation.

Method 1: See the reality clearly.

The CEO office of FMCG company has beautiful glass windows, exquisite spotlights and mirrors to display their products. In this way, every time you watch it, you deceive yourself once.

The author suggests replacing it with shelves in ordinary supermarkets to display his and his competitors' products.

The CEO accepted the author's suggestion. Now, every time he looks up, he sees reality.

In this way, the marketing manager will know that the boss knows the reality and wants to know it.

Method 2: Be your own customer.

You call your company's service hotline for help, see how they handle it, and feel how they torture their customers.

Stay in your own hotel. The author asked for ice cubes in the hotel. Five minutes later, a waiter came, knocked on the door and took the ice box. Five minutes later, he brought an ice box full of ice. ?

But why not just bring an ice box full of ice and replace the empty one?

Method 3: Become a competitor's customer.

Observe how competitors do things in different ways and think about the reasons.

At Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing, every day around 5 pm, the waiter will put ice cubes in the room, whether you call or not. ?

Considering the cost, it is not cost-effective. After 30 minutes, the ice melted and made a slight creak to remind the tenants that they could drink delicious iced whisky.

? Perhaps the hotel found that in this way, the hotel can sell more things in the wine cabinet, and the profit rate of those products is very rich.

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