How to meet customer needs in 5 steps

how to meet customer needs in five steps my name is Charlie Gail and I'm a copywriter here at product marketing [Music] Alliance sometimes circumstances stop your customer from meeting their needs with your product or services and when you've devoted copious amounts of time and effort to developing a product or service you're super proud of it can be difficult to stomach seeing customers go elsewhere but not to worry some steps can be taken to address common pain points and have your customers eating out the palm of your hand well not literally but you know what we mean here are some ideas number one pull customer feedback from different sources to show multiple sides of the story everyone's number one choice is always going to be one-on-one phone video or in-person time but sometimes that's easier said than done so here are all your options call your customers this will give you an open Forum to get firsthand answers from the horse's mouth and comes with a couple of pretty huge benefits benefit number one you can explore areas you might not have originally anticipated if a customer's answers Sparks a question that wasn't on your premeditated list for example benefit two you can gauge their inflections and this can say an awful lot about how a customer really thinks and feels for example let's say you send out an email survey for people to complete one of the questions is what do you think about our analytic software and someone answers yeah it's good written down that might not seem like a negative at a glance but what if the Q&A happened over the phone and it turned out there was a long pause while they had to think about it before they responded and the customer's voice was a bit deflated and unsure instantly it becomes less positive in terms of organizing your calls if you want time for a decent chat it's probably best to book appointments with your customers in advance after all no one likes a 20-minute phone call being sprung on them out of the blue giving people notice will also ensure they book time out to answer your questions with care and thought if you're going with the ad hoc approach just be mindful of what time of the day you pick up the phone remembering to take time zones into account too it's thought between 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. is best lunchtime between 1: p.m. and 2: p.m. is the worst a hungry customer is not a happy customer oh last couple of tips for this one tip one remember to ask open-ended questions onewed answers don't tell you much so for example instead of asking do you like our analytics software ask can you tell us what features in particular you like about our analytics software and why tip two people are busy and sometimes it takes a little nudge for them to part ways with some of their time for you try it for free first and be creative with your approach but if you don't get anywhere and you have the budget think about attaching an incentive to the cool as simple voucher would do get the info secondhand unlocking internal data is a Time old problem in the pmm community we all know other departments sales and customer service in particular are sitting on a gold mine of data but extracting it can be like getting water from a stone sometimes unfortunately there's no quick or easy fix for this one and before you're freely and regularly fed with the information you need an internal cultural shift might be needed why because rightly or wrongly before said people in said Apartments go out of their way to help you they need to understand why it's important and how it benefits them the good news is that's pretty easy to justify better products and features means easier sales for your reps and fewer calls for your service departments winner next you need to make it as easy as possible you're busy they're busy and everyone's busy but the harder you make feeding back the less likely they are to stick to it and they kind of hold the cards on this one so it's best to give them what they want within reason of course a couple of ideas include introducing a CRM whereby customer and Prospect facing teams can easily add important notes there and then the later they recall what they've been told the more likely they are to forget or miscommunicate key details investing in something like slack and creating channels dedicated to feedback on things like reason customer complained reason Prospect didn't convert and customer praise sending someone from your your team over to do random desk drops throughout the day to pick their brains in person tip if you want to really Drive adoption of this kind of mindset it could be worth gamifying it at least for the first quarter or two until it's fully embedded for example you could offer a reward to the sales rep who provides the most and richest feedback each week analyze phone calls this could be with your sales customer service support or in boarding teams and can be used in tandem or instead of the previous Point admittedly this option is going to be a lot more labor intensive and there are tools going out there to help like gong chorus sales Loft and refract while the above tools are great the only snag is they're predominantly for sales enablement which doesn't necessarily help decipher post sale conversations so here are a couple of ideas on how to make the qualitative data you earwig on manageable and actionable divvy it up that way you can work your way through more without eating too much into any one person's day set up a system for example you could create a score card with specific issues listed and then each time a customer raises something relating to that issue scribble some of the buzzword into the corresponding field on the flip side you could monitor things people don't say for example sticking with the CRM Builder if not a single person mentions your drag and drop Builder as a pro is it really as easy as you think approach them in person if you put on semi-regular events trade shows or conferences for your customers use them as an opportunity to poach them for feedback odds are people will be a bit more giving with their time if they're already at the event for them by you if all goes to plan this could be a great Outlet to get tons of firsthand feedback at once one caveat for this though is to make sure you're speaking to the right person if you're B2B and want to understand how customer find your CRM system you need to speak to the person who uses it not the person who foots the bill if all else fails you've still got lots of online options to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback you'll just miss out on some of the benefits that come hand inand with actually hearing the responses some popular tactics include sending out email SMS and inapp surveys going through social media conversations public and private adding a quick form to your Wi-Fi network commonly used in cafes restaurants bars Leisure centers and hotels using feedback monitoring sites like Google and yex recording visitors website sessions reviewing live chat transcripts two map your insights back to your customer profiles and LTV Kareem Zuri general manager and Chief Operating Officer at Cascade shares the rest of these steps for meeting customer needs he says quantify the jobs to be done and unmet customer needs don't just service feature requests instead focus on the problem the customer is trying to solve remove bias and assess alignment with your company goals and product strategy three look at your funnel from acquisition to churn continuing on he said in order to gain alignment across different parts of the business this is essential it helps each team to begin to understand how actions they take at the top and bottom of the funnel can impact customers further on in their Journey make sure you have the success metrics along the customer journey to measure product lovability at any time a heart framework provides a set of five user Centric metrics that involve around happiness engagement adoption retention and task success each metric aligns with a goal and a signal to let you know how well you're tracking towards that goal four get input to gain buyin again he continues for instance if the feedback is related to a new feature ask the product manager's thoughts on how it fits into their road map have they thought about this feature from this particular Vantage Point allow them to publish their thoughts on the request so they feel they're able to add input into the work that you do is this request something that we are already planning to ship is this issue related to a broader problem we've seen consistently across several sources if we build this solution how big is the impact will it help help with engagement reach expansion or retention what's the time to value is there a dependency that's blocking us from taking action today five let your customers know you're doing something about it your road map is not a secret but it doesn't have to be set in stone either make your upcoming road map collaborative be transparent with your customers discuss it with them and understand what's critical and what a particular feature may mean for them be proactive in communicating not only what's coming soon but also what you are considering longterm at its core this program continues to help us bring customer feedback information and thoughts to the Forefront of our business conversations our aim was to consistently demonstrate at scale what our customers are saying and how they feel about our offer we will continue to work towards this ever elusive goal and I confident that in the interim we've managed to ensure transparency and Alignment across the business Steve Jobs once said you've got to start with a customer experience and work backward to the technology don't put it off and say it's someone else's job implementing a customer obsessed culture within your company is definitely your job as a product marketer don't settle drive internal conversations and be the voice of the customer always [Music]

Channel: Product Marketing Alliance

Views: 110

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Id: 8exysvPLCRY

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024