14. Customer Research

Getting information from your real live existing customers. Why would we want to do that? Why is it important?

  • What customers want is vital
  • What customers perceive is more important than what we think
  • Do ‘good’ customers see us differently to ‘average’ ones? Why/How?
  • What benefits do they get from your product/service?
  • Which ones are most important?

You’ll learn so much from contacting the customers.

For example, Tesco were languishing behind Sainsbury’s in the supermarket wars for years. The major reason they became number one was the launch of their loyalty Club Card.

It all started the day the Tesco board of directors decided to visit a few stores to see what they could do to improve their business. They asked some of the managers what things they believed would help the store improve, and although they got some good ideas, none of them were earth-shattering.

Then the Chairman decided to approach the shop-floor staff and one of them came up with the following idea, which proved a turning-point…

“Why don’t you ask the customers?”

From that day, that’s what Tesco do – they ask their customers.

Simple. Basic. Common Sense. But that’s all it took to create one of the most successful businesses in the world! When you carry out customer research, the fortunes of the business will change rapidly.

  • What would you like to know
  • How are you going to keep an open mind when you speak to them
  • What attempt have you made to contact them before
  • What did you learn
  • What did you do with this information

Each module starts with two relatively open questions which You Must Answer!

You then hit Save.

You will be emailed the rest of the module, which is in a Word compatible format .rtf and a link to a Google Doc, which will allow you to edit online.

This document contains the rest of the module, to include everything we know about the subject, links, examples, and of course further key questions for you to answer as well.

Being your document on your PC or in the cloud, you can save at any stage and go back to at any time too. In fact, this is probably the best way to tackle this work.

So let’s start this module by answering these key questions:

 

DOWNLOAD

This document contains the rest of the module, including everything we know about the subject, links, examples, and of course further key questions for you to answer as well.