Know Your Customer - How to Seize Opportunities and Engage Loyalty
Joseph Michelli, Ph.D.
Professor of Service Excellence at Campbellsville University, New York Times #1 Bestselling Author, Certified Customer Experience (CX) Professional, CEO The Michelli Experience, CX Hall of Fame Inductee, Board Member
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Let's imagine you have a friend who owns a restaurant, and your friend asks you the following question:
Out of necessity during the pandemic, I replaced paper menus with QR code accessible digital menus. Should I continue with the digital menus, or am I keeping them more for my cost savings as opposed to customer preferences?
How would you respond?
As a young consultant, I would have quickly responded to that type of inquiry. These days I resist the urge to offer spontaneous answers and instead ask questions to ensure experience optimization for target customers.
Below you will find sample questions that might help you determine how to serve your key customers best.
1) What is the age distribution of your current customer base, and which customer groups are your strategic priority? For this discussion, let's assume your customer base skews older, but you want to attract a younger demographic. That information should guide a transition from low tech to high tech tools.
2) What are you informally observing and hearing from customers about your current approach? Your customers' actions and spontaneous conversations are rich resources for service decision-making. In the words of Diana Oreck, Executive Vice President - Owner Experience at Netjets, "You learn so much about customers by keeping your antenna up and your radar on."
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3) Have you asked your customers about their preferences? In addition to what you can glean from customers' actions and spontaneous feedback, it is vital to create a regular cadence of customer listening. Often this inquiry can be as simple as a one-question pulse survey.
4) How do you accommodate customers who want an alternative experience? Since few brands serve a singular customer group, it's essential to explore how you can adjust your primary delivery method to meet the needs of secondary and tertiary customer segments. In the hypothetical example above, the restaurateur?needs to create workable solutions for customer segments that don't want to use a smartphone to order their food.
5) If you make a service-related change that results in a cost-saving, how are you reinvesting some of that windfall to enhance the experience for your optimal customer segments? When you win, your customer should also win. Efficiency should benefit your bottom line AND the future needs of your core customer segments.
While customer design questions seldom have easy answers, the more we understand our optimal customer segments, the more effectively we can make choices that benefit them.
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To learn more about our team, please visit?josephmichelli.com . To speak to me about optimizing experiences for your key customer segments, please go to?josephmichelli.com/contact .
Chief Experience Officer at billquiseng.com. Award-winning Customer CARE Expert, Keynote Speaker, and Blogger
2 年Joseph, I didn’t just? ?? like your post.? Readers who like an article are satisfied with it. They feel it's good, not better. Just average. Nobody raves about average. And satisfied readers will forget the article when they find something better.? I ? loved it! ?That means I will remember it, re-read it and recommend it to others. Customers pay for their experience, not the business's product or service. They think the best value for their experience, not your logical price, product, or service. To them, perception is reality and feelings are facts. In this case, dining patrons don't care how big that restaurant is. They care about how big the restaurant cares about them. So when the restauranteur only has digital menus, then patrons who only want paper menus will decide to opt-out out of the restaurant. And dining patrons are talking about the restaurant whether they know it or not, like it or not. So those patrons may tell their friends that the restaurant doesn't care about them. The restaurateur can decide. Whatever he decides, customers will decide, too.
Top LinkedIn User | U.S. Armed Forces Veteran | Husband & Father | B2B Business Coach | Sales Leader | Public Speaker | Workshop Facilitator
2 年Recently finished an excellent book by John C. Maxwell--Good Leaders Ask Great Questions. Spot on advice, Joseph!
Founder and Principal @ European Etiquette Academy. British Butler and hospitality service consultant. Protocol Consultant. Digital KOL for Etiquette & Life skills. Together we can make a difference.
2 年The third one would of course be the most important Joseph , what is the customer preference? QR code menu’s are of course cheap and you do not need to reprint the while menu for an ingredient change. But , many people like to schmooz and peruse a menu , it also makes a good conversation ice-breaker for any guests. Certainly one part of a restaurants ambience is the interaction with the Ma?tre D’ or the Order Taker , especially if a diner wishes to customize a dish or switch an ingredient. This is much more impersonal with a digitized format , albeit may just not be possible. Bring back the menu’s for me!