Entrepreneur’s Notebook—Workers, Customers Key to Helpful Market Research

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Many business owners, trying to differentiate their companies from those of their competitors, will often say that they provide “better customer service.” That sounds good, but what exactly does it mean? Obviously, it means different things for different companies. The hard part is figuring out what it means for your company, then determining how you will deliver on what you’re promising.

Probably the best first step in trying to get a handle on what “better customer service” means for your company is to write down, off the top of your head, what you think it means. That can be anything from a “no questions asked” return policy, to being open seven days a week, to having a large selection of items to choose from, to whatever else you think defines better service. If you’re in a service industry, your list might include direct access to senior management or requiring that all inquiries receive a response no later than the next business day.

Once you’ve completed your list, take a look at each item and ask yourself if you’re really the only company in your industry that offers that item. I think you’ll find that the majority of things on your list are not as unique as you might think. This is where the task becomes more difficult; trying to determine what is truly unique to your company, and what makes your customer experience better than your competitors’, is not easy.

The good news is that you don’t have to figure this out all alone. And you shouldn’t even try. Start by talking with your employees. They’re on the front line, and have first-hand knowledge from working directly with your customer base. Ask them to define what sets your company apart from the competition and how they would define the desired customer experience. More often than not, business owners who do this will uncover quite a few things they never even thought of.

But it’s important not to stop there. No one can give you better information than your customers themselves. And they’ll be very glad you asked them for their opinions.


Tap into customers

There are a number of ways to survey your customers. You can hand out questionnaires as you see your customers, call your customers and survey them over the phone, mail surveys with monthly invoices (or on their own), or hire a market research firm or consultant to handle the research for you.

Given that your goal is to determine how to position your company in the marketplace, which is an extremely important issue, you might best be served by having a professional market researcher help you with this project. This person or firm will help you formulate the exact objectives that you want the research to achieve, help ensure that an appropriate research methodology is used to achieve those objectives, conduct the research in the most “customer-friendly” manner and help you interpret the results and formulate action items as a result of the research.

Once you’ve conducted your study, you should have a very good idea of what the desired customer service experience is for your customers and a pretty good sense of how close you are to providing that. When doing your research, make sure you ask your customers if they currently use, or have used, the services of your competitors to see how they fit into the spectrum of desired customer service. This will help you determine the areas you can emphasize that will enable you to provide better customer service than your competitors, as well as areas in which you need to improve.

While this may sound complicated, with the help of a skilled researcher it will be much easier than you think and will provide you with a great deal of very useful information. And once you have the information, your consultant can help you to synthesize it into a coherent set of steps from which to take action.

Once armed with a definition of what “better customer service” means for your company, you’ll be ready to promote that definition in your advertising and promotional materials. More importantly, however, you’ll need to make sure you can live up to the expectations you’ll be setting in your advertising and corporate materials. To that end, it’s extremely important that you communicate exactly what you expect from all your employees when they deal with customers.

After asking your customers for their input and making promises about the kind of customer service they will experience as a result of doing business with your company, one of the worst things that could happen is to not live up to your promises.

It’s also important to remember that when you define what better customer service means for your customers, that definition is based on how they feel right now, and doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t change in the future. That’s why you’ll want to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis. Along with routinely surveying your customer base, it might also be a good idea to have comment cards available to your customers so they can communicate with you whenever they feel it’s necessary.

Don’t be afraid to receive negative comments. You’d much rather have customers telling you their complaints than telling someone else. This not only helps you diffuse a negative experience, it can also help you identify steps to make sure a negative customer service experience won’t happen to anyone else. You’ll also receive comment cards praising you and your staff on a job well done. Remember to communicate these messages to your employees; they’ll go a long way in boosting morale, productivity and overall job satisfaction.

Mark Hafner is president of Celtic Capital Corp., a provider of asset-based capital from $500,000 to $5 million. He can be reached at [email protected].

Entrepreneur’s Notebook is a regular column contributed by EC2, The Annenberg Incubator Project, a center for multimedia and electronic communications at the University of Southern California. Contact James Klein at (213) 743-1759 with feedback and topic suggestions.

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