The old saying that “the customer is always right” is hard to accomplish. The implied outcome is business will bend (within reason, of course) to cater to the needs or wants of the consumer so as not to lose them. In the world of brick and mortar, this meant avoiding the possibility of the customer turning around and walking out the door—something that required physical effort on the part of the customer at minimum and often caused them increased inconvenience.
In today’s world, consumers have more choices than ever—usually at their fingertips—and “walking out the door” often means an online consumer taking less than a second to click away and search fro a better fit. The stakes are much higher.
How do we ensure we are placing the customer/client/consumer/audience first? We start with data.
Ask these questions:
- Do I/we understand our target audience(s) and where the different segments lie? If so, what is this knowledge based on?
- Does the target audience most value product or relationship?
- In what ways are we not tailoring our marketing and technology experiences to the customer?
Once we have answers to these three questions, we are prepared to put the customer or client first from their initial experience with us. In doing so, we set them up to be right because we’ve treated them right.