Types of Customer Needs

What are customer needs?

A customer need is a motive that prompts a customer to buy a product or service. Ultimately, the need is the driver of the customer's purchase decision. In the software business, the need for a system or a software usually arises when a company or a certain organization has the need to fix an existing problem such as data collection.

Customer-centric companies know that solving for customer needs and exceeding expectations along the way is how to drive healthy business growth and foster good relationships with the people your company serves. 

Creating a customer-centric company that truly listens to customer needs can be daunting, and there's a steep learning curve if you haven't paid close attention to customers before. 

Some of the most common types of customer needs include the following and it is worth noting that most work in tandem with one another to drive a purchasing decision. Product needs include functionality which entails customers and how they need your product or service to function the way they need in order to solve their problem or desire. It also revolves around price in regards to the fact that customers have unique budgets with which they can purchase a product or service.

There is also the aspect of convenience whereby your product or service has to be a convenient solution to the function your customers are trying to meet. 

Product needs also entail experience in that the experience of customers using your product or service needs to be easy -- or at least clear -- so as not to create more work for your customers.

Then there comes the factor of design whereby along the lines of experience, the product or service needs a slick design to make it relatively easy and intuitive to use.

Other factors of product needs include reliability with which the product or service needs to reliably function as advertised every time the customer wants to use it. There is also performance whereby the product or service needs to perform correctly so the customer can achieve their goals.

Other factors or product need include the following:

1. Transparency

Customers expect transparency from a company they're doing business with. Service outages, pricing changes, and things breaking happen, and customers deserve openness from the businesses they give money to.

2. Control

Customers need to feel like they're in control of the business interaction from start to finish and beyond, and customer empowerment shouldn't end with the sale. Make it easy for them to return products, change subscriptions, adjust terms, etc.

3. Options

Customers need options when they're getting ready to make a purchase from a company. Offer a variety of product, subscription, and payment options to provide that freedom of choice.

The first step to identifying customer needs is with a customer needs analysis that takes all of the following into account: product-market fit, customer feedback, input from your service team, and any customer service data you can gather. 

A customer needs analysis is used in product development and branding to provide an in-depth analysis of the customer to ensure that the product or message offers the benefits, attributes, and features needed to provide the customer with value.

Customer needs analysis is typically conducted by running surveys that help companies figure out their position in their respective competitive markets and how they stack up in terms of meeting their target customers' needs.