Are you a new business owner or a well-established entrepreneur? Irrespective of your status, the success of any business is measured by your ability to win over potential customers.
To convert target customers to loyal customers, you need to understand the business market and your competitors. However, most importantly, you need to understand your customers’ needs.
By understanding the needs of your target customers, you can know their challenges, desires, and goals. Thus, you can design new products that meet their needs, converting them into loyal customers. But what are some customer needs businesses should know of? Read on to find out.
1. Functional Needs
These are the most obvious customer needs and the most tangible. Before making a purchase decision, the customer evaluates if the product or service will help them achieve a specific function. After analyzing the product features, the customer will buy what seems to address their functional needs. By understanding customer needs, they can focus on developing new products specifically geared to meeting customer needs.
It’s highly recommended nowadays that you have a specialized team who handles these matters. More and more businesses are hiring a logistics company that helps them figure out the most effective transport solutions. These are teams of dedicated experts who can help with a variety of customer needs, including delivery times, schedules, and tracking.
2. Price
Customers will always consider price before making a purchase decision. They want to know they are getting value for their money, and you are offering a better deal than your customers. Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean you should slash your prices. Instead, you can consider offering discounts to win over new customers.
3. Social Needs
It refers to a customer’s need regarding how a potential customer would like to be perceived by others when consuming your product or service. Although social needs are barely a primary concern, they influence the purchase decision. Hence, once you understand your target customers’ social needs, you can use the information in product development and market processes.
4. Empathy
89% of customers who experience excellent customer service say they can make another purchase from the company. Customers need to know you value them, understand, and care for them. While it may seem insignificant, excellent customer service helps meet your customer needs, turning new customers into loyal customers.
Therefore, customer experience matters and can be improved by showing empathy. Be more than a brand or business and relate personally with your customers. Also, ensure customer satisfaction for every person who transacts with your business.
5. Usability
To win over new customers, you need to offer products or services that meet customer needs. What you offer should be useful and convenient. Therefore, it’s essential to conduct market research to determine what customers need, what they currently use, and why. By understanding the different uses of your product, you can engage in product development to develop products that fit their needs.
6. Information
Even after carrying out market research and improving product features, your target audience may sometimes be unsure what suits their needs. Therefore, they need guidance which can be done through access to the right information.
You can use knowledge bases and digital signage to showcase information your customers need. Additionally, you can hand out brochures with customer insights to help them make an informed purchase. Alternatively, you can organize webinars where both your current customers and target customers can attend to know more about your products or services
7. Risk Reduction
Some businesses struggle with customer retention even after reaching your target audience with differentiated products and getting new customers. While your products may be reliable, your customers need to know they aren’t risking their money.
8. Accessibility
Your customers need to know they can reach you when need be. So, as part of excellent customer service, hire a service team and customer support team who work round the clock to support your customers. In addition, the customer support team should be available to listen to customer feedback. They should also smoothly guide target customers in their customer journey.
Additionally, you should provide omni channel platforms where your customer base can reach you, like social media platforms, contacts, and emails. In fact, you can easily manage your customers through a CRM software. Other customer support channels include a chatting feature on your website. Accessibility plays a great role in customer retention and customer satisfaction.
9. Reliability
Before making a purchase decision, customers need to know they can trust your product. They need assurance that the product will last and function properly throughout its lifetime. By designing new products that are reliable and meet your customers’ needs, you can easily retain them.
Furthermore, customers need reliability in terms of service. Therefore, perform customer needs analysis to determine their needs and create new customer-centric products that they can rely on.
10. Control
A commonly ignored customer need by small businesses is control. There are different forms of control, and to identify which control your focus group’s needs, you need to conduct a customer needs analysis. Sometimes, your current customer control needs could differ from target personas’ needs. Your customers could need control over subscriptions, shipping, or customization.
In Closing
By identifying and understanding customer needs, you can boost your brand and business. You can carry out customer surveys in your focus groups to understand your target customer needs. Then, align your product development goals and new product features to meet your customers’ needs. Remember, customer satisfaction comes first because happy customers are the key to your success. Therefore, always aim to offer excellent customer service and a positive customer experience.
