What customer needs assessment techniques can you use to improve retention?

1 Ask open-ended questions

Gaining valuable insights into your customers' needs, motivations, and perceptions can be achieved by asking open-ended questions. These questions cannot be answered with a yes or no, but require more elaboration and explanation. For example, you could ask your customers how they use your product in their daily workflow, what the benefits and drawbacks are, what problems or pain points they are facing, how you can help them achieve desired outcomes or solve issues, and how satisfied they are with your product and support. By engaging in this type of dialogue with your customers, you can not only gain insights but also build rapport and trust as you show genuine interest and empathy for their situation.

2 Conduct surveys and polls

Assessing your customers' needs can be effectively done through surveys and polls. These tools enable you to collect quantitative data from a large number of customers, as well as to measure their satisfaction and loyalty levels. Surveys and polls can come in the form of customer satisfaction surveys, net promoter score (NPS) surveys, customer effort score (CES) surveys, or feature preference polls. Through these methods, you can quantify your customers' needs, preferences, and expectations, benchmark your performance, identify areas for improvement, and segment your customers based on their responses. This will allow you to tailor your communication and offers to best meet their needs.

3 Observe and analyze customer behavior

A third way to assess your customers' needs is to observe and analyze their behavior when they interact with your product or service, such as how they use it, how often they use it, what features they use or ignore, what problems they encounter, and how they react to your messages and offers. Customer behavior can reveal a lot about their needs, wants, and frustrations, as well as their level of engagement and loyalty. To observe and analyze customer behavior, you can employ various methods, such as analytics tools to track customer metrics, heat maps to visualize customer interactions with your website or app, user testing to gain direct feedback from customers, and customer feedback channels like reviews or testimonials. By doing so, you can understand how customers use and perceive your product or service, as well as what drives or hinders their satisfaction and retention. Furthermore, you can discover new features or improvements that your customers need or want, allowing you to test and optimize your product or service accordingly.

5 Apply the KANO model

Assessing your customers' needs can be done using the KANO model, which categorizes needs into three types: basic, performance, and delight. Basic needs are those that customers expect and take for granted, such as functionality, reliability, and security. Performance needs are those that customers value and compare, such as speed, quality, and price. Delight needs are those that customers don't expect but appreciate, such as innovation, personalization, and surprise. Different methods can be used to apply the KANO model, such as a questionnaire to rate how customers feel about features or attributes of a product or service; analysis to plot customer ratings on a matrix; and prioritization to focus on features that matter most to customers. By applying the KANO model, you can differentiate needs based on their importance and relevance and optimize product or service development and delivery.