Your Customers Know What They Want. Ask them!

Just as the last of your items gets scanned at the checkout in a store, an associate might say something like, “That it for today?”

This is a truncated version of a question they’re asking customers all day long, which is, “Is there anything else you would like to buy from us today?”

If you chatted with the owner of a company, they might ask a higher-level version of the same question, which is,”Is there anything else we could help you with today?”

No matter how it is phrased, customers can easily understand the underlying motivation behind this question. What the company really wants to know is whether — while they’re still in buying mode — a customer might be willing to spend just a little bit more.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to maximize the financial value of each customer relationship, but the businesses that become truly successful focus on giving value, too.

They look beyond the transactional moment of the sale. They pay attention to customers’ unmet needs and unspoken desires. They seek opportunities to innovate. In a way, they’re still asking “Is there anything else we could help you with today?” They’re just leaving off the word “today.”

What are the perennial or long-standing problems customers have that you could solve, for example? The only way to find out is by taking the time to seek out their opinions, to listen and then act.

Lots of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) conduct some kind of customer research in the early days. It might have been part of putting together your business plan, for instance, when you wanted to be sure your products and services had a market large enough to support them.

It’s just as important to continue gathering feedback long after you’ve launched, though. You’ll identify new areas in which you can expand. What you hear will also help you prioritize, so you’re not chasing too many opportunities at once. Most of all, customers appreciate being heard. Actively listening to them helps ensure they’ll be open minded as you bring new innovations to life.

These are a just a few of the simple and even fun approaches you could take, either through surveys or one-on-one conversations:

1. “The agenda”

You already know your customers live rich, full lives outside of those moments when they’re selling them a product or service. The details of their day-to-day activities, however, are probably elusive.

See if a customer might be willing to walk through the usual agenda that determines their schedule. Explain that you want to have a better context in which to serve them. “What does an average day look like for you?” is a gentle way of asking.

They might list off things like stopping to get coffee in the morning on the way to work, dropping off kids at school and meeting clients for lunch. If they work remotely, their schedule could be entirely different, where they are trying to get a load of laundry done in between video conferencing calls.

Pay attention to where they are investing time in activities that bore them, frustrate them or simply get in the way of their biggest to-dos. Notice where they would like to be faster, more efficient or see better results. These are all areas where you might be able to develop products and services to help.

2. “Favourite things”

Customers might have a bag they take with them everywhere. They might have a go-to service for getting clothes dry cleaned or maintaining their car. Nothing could come between them and their most cherished app, mobile device or ball cap.

Ask your customers to list 10 things they couldn’t possibly live without. It could be a product or service. You could choose categories that are somewhat aligned to your business, if you like.

The point of this is to get deeper into the “why” behind their favourite things. Maybe it’s the design of the product. Maybe it’s the way a service is delivered. Sometimes our preferences are based on our emotional reactions. In other words, how using a product or service makes us feel smarter, more attractive or that we’re part of a community.

Whatever the attributes are, you’ll want to infuse them into whatever you offer next.

3. “Target practice”

All of your customers have goals. They might want to save more money, improve their physical fitness or develop a sideline business of their own.

It’s always a good idea to invite customers to share their goals, whether they’re directly related to your products and services or not. Make sure you not only get a general sense of what they’re aspiring to do or be, but their specific targets.

A customer might dream of climbing a mountain “someday,” but the more specific goal might be to book a long-overdue vacation by the next summer.

That could give you a lot of room to create products or services that help them get ahead at work, to put aside some extra cash for a trip, or just to give them ideas on where they could travel safely.

Final thoughts

You won’t get an idea for new innovations from every single customer. Some of what you learn might be too specific to an individual, or is focused on an area in which you don’t realistically see an opportunity to compete.

The more often you conduct customer research, though, the more likely you’ll start to recognize some common needs and wants. This is still only the starting point. You’ll want to build on your initial findings with more questions, and maybe research other sources as well.

As you develop a prototype of a product or a beta version of a new service, think about letting some of the same customers test it out. Their feedback will be enormously helpful in fine-tuning your offerings before you officially launch them.

Yes, your customers know what they want. And by asking regularly, they’ll continue to turn to you as a business they trust to give it to them.