Stay in Touch with Your Customers’ Experiences
- FEATURED ARTICLE
Stay in Touch with Your Customers’ Experiences
Tim Reed
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Most companies think the products and services they offer are the best around but, often, that’s based purely on their own opinion rather than their customer’s experiences. And, as companies grow, the disconnect can get worse and worse—leading to all kinds of problems.
But that’s not true of everyone.
There are some businesses who know exactly what their customers experience—and stay intentionally connected with them as their company evolves and grows. These companies have a superpower in the market over everyone else who’s content to rest on their laurels and self-confidence. Because, even though it requires focus and effort, the knowledge gained from intimately understanding what your customers go through can’t be bought or acquired—it can only be earned.
These companies have a superpower in the market over everyone else.
And companies who have this earned knowledge have four major advantages in the market over companies who don’t.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know how their products are actually doing.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know where they need to improve.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know what they need to stop.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know where they need to innovate.
Here’s how that knowledge can be put to use for the companies who have it.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know how their products are actually doing.
Despite anything that’s said in a company meeting or sales presentation, the only way to know how your products are viewed in the marketplace is to know how your customers are experiencing them.
I’ve been a part of companies who have proudly said, “we don’t have competition”, while routinely losing jobs to businesses in our market that were ten times our size. I’ve seen organizations in our industry proudly tout their commitment to how efficiently they deliver products to their customers only to ignore the fact that they are disdained by many of those same customers who receive such efficient deliveries.
At the same time, I know companies who read every Google review their company receives and have used that unfiltered feedback to improve their customer experience to become nearly unbeatable in their market.
In my own business, staying in touch with our partner’s experiences has saved us multiple times from trusting in our own self-assurance at key decision points. In particular, I can think of feedback I’ve received from two customers that was rude, demeaning, and 100% correct at the same time—and this feedback has absolutely shaped the direction of our company since.
Years ago, my friend Grant Falco told me to never make a customer apologize for their experience and that idea has stuck with me ever since. Staying connected with that experience will serve the future of your business in incredible ways.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know where they need to improve.
It’s easy to talk about the new and exciting thing that you want to do in your business, but innovations that actually move the needle are the ones that make your customer’s experience with your product better.
If a business can stay in touch with their customers’ experiences, over time, they’ll see patterns of feedback that show them exactly where they need to get better. Oftentimes, a business will spend all kinds of time and money adding something new to their offerings—a new product, a service, or a customization—when simply improving something they were already doing would have had a greater impact.
The temptation, especially in an economy like we’re experiencing now, is to look outside for answers. “If we only expanded into this area we could get more market share”, “if we only offered these additional products we could grow our average sale”, or “if we only hired this company to help us we could improve our margins.”
Now, to be clear, none of those things are bad in and of themselves, but they often take a company’s focus away from what they can do to improve what they are already doing—and instead further dilute their time, energy, and focus by adding something new and shiny.
For us, trying to stay in touch with the experience of our customers has kept us focused on making the right improvements to our products and services. The process can be painful, nuanced, and time-consuming, but making things better for your customers often results in them finding more customers for your business.
The temptation, especially in an economy like we’re experiencing now, is to look outside for answers.
This article is brought to you by ICC.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know what they need to stop.
Most companies have too many products and services, but don’t have the guts to get rid of the ones that aren’t making an impact. The good news is that, by understanding the experience of your customers, your business doesn’t have to make that call—your customer can.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard defined what it was to dominate the marketplace from the 1960s through the 1990s by adhering to the idea that more companies die from ingestion of too many products, services, and opportunities rather than starvation from not having enough. And this same idea is true for us.
In our industry, most manufacturers make too many products and most retailers offer too many products—and all of this extra fat makes a company bloated, slow, and unable to focus on the things that they are best at.
But by staying in touch with the experience of their customers, a company can know with certainty which products are the ones that aren’t relevant and go all in on the ones that are.
And while it might sound crazy to cut down your service offerings, more often than not, the focus and clarity gained can yield incredible fruit. When the late Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 they were on the verge of bankruptcy and burning through cash to maintain the myriad of products and variants they were producing. In one of their early meetings, Jobs said to the team, “How are we going to explain this to others when we don’t even know which products to recommend to our friends?”
These words should ring true for us too.
In my company, we’ve gotten rid of products that, just 6 months earlier, I would have said were going to be incredible, but didn’t make a difference for our customers. And while it’s difficult to get rid of a product or service in your company, I’ve found that the focus gained from cutting the fat has always resulted in good things.
- Businesses who stay in touch with their customer’s experiences know when to innovate.
While many companies claim to value innovation, the ones who actually make a difference with it are most often the ones who understand their customer’s experiences and take them into account with their decision of where—and when—to innovate.
One of the truest principles in business is that if you solve one problem well for your customers you’ll often be rewarded with the invitation to solve more. And that opportunity to solve more problems for your customers not only grows your business with them, but also with more customers like them. This is the first innovation we should seek to make.
Now, not only should we stay in touch with the experiences our customers have with our business, but also with the experiences they have outside of it. By knowing what your customer goes through every day, you’ll find incredible opportunities to innovate and expand to that you never would have known about otherwise. And the best part is that you don’t have to guess whether or not this innovation will be valuable in the market because it’s based on the lived experience of the people you are already serving.
While it’s tempting right now to think that innovation lies with artificial intelligence and augmented reality, my guess is that there are much simpler innovations right in front of you that should be pressed into first.
At my company, we’ve historically built tools for the fireplace industry, but in recent months have been asked to apply them to barbecues, spas, decking, and, yes, cattle feed—all stemming from solving the first problem that the customer had—and this has led to incredible innovation of our products that we would have missed out on without exploring those opportunities.
To be clear, just because your customer invites you to solve another one of their problems doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea for you to do it—after all, business is about laser-like focus. But it does give you the ability to think about your company differently and explore how you can innovate.
Companies who understand their customer’s experiences are in the blessed position of being able to understand the market at a deeper level than anyone else—and find the innovation that sets it on fire.
And the best part is that you don’t have to guess whether or not this innovation will be valuable in the market because it’s based on the lived experience of the people you’re already serving.
Conclusion
So, how do you do it?
How does a company stay in touch with their customer’s experiences when there are already so many things going on?
It starts with commitment. Companies need to resolve that understanding what their customers go through is more important than many other things that currently have priority. From there, processes can be developed to help—I’ve seen a lot of success with customer surveys and follow-up phone calls. When I was managing retail stores, we would call competitors and try to schedule service calls for my house to see what the process was like. In addition, we would secret shop other retailers as often as we could to try and understand what it was like for our customers when they were shopping for fireplaces. And, it wasn’t only the competition—we learned all kinds of things from the owner’s wife calling our scheduling team to try and book an installation.
Whatever the methods you decide on, a regular commitment to hear from your customers, and put yourself in their shoes, will give your company incredible insight into the marketplace. You’ll know the truth about your company, you’ll understand exactly where you’re knocking the cover off the ball, you’ll gain awareness of what things need to be improved, and, most importantly, you’ll have the inside track of where—and how—to innovate your products going forward.
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Tim Reed
Tim Reed is the President of WhyFire, where he helps business leaders in the hearth industry take control of their companies by providing them with sales tools to save time and make money. He's also the host of The Fire Time Podcast, which is actively helping thousands of people grow themselves—and their companies.
