Ignoring Your Customer’s Needs in Building Materials

A funny thing happens to building materials companies when business is good. They start to forget the customers who helped them grow.

When things are going well, it’s easy to take the customer for granted. Customer retention starts to slip. Costs get cut to improve the margins. 

We do this because we assume our customers aren’t going anywhere. But if we make things harder or more frustrating for them, they will.

Customers are the lifeblood of the building materials market, but they’re often treated like a necessary evil, not like an essential part of the business.

Response times and shipping dates get longer. Order status, pricing and tech support are in decline, too. 

And forget about special requests.

It’s like building materials companies think they have to choose: they can either have a growth in sales and margins or they can increase their customer satisfaction.

They forget that Amazon, Tesla, Apple and countless other companies have managed to do both. There’s no reason building materials companies can’t do the same.

Focusing on the customer’s needs is essential to staying competitive now. The companies that are most aware of those needs will outperform the ones that simply cut costs because they can.

There’s nothing wrong with cutting costs. The trick is knowing which costs you can cut without making the customer feel like they don’t matter. If you can figure out what those are, you can lower your expenses while increasing your growth.

This is one of the few areas in life where you can have your cake and eat it, too. You just need to make smart decisions without forgetting what your customers need from you.