The Solution
You need to have your eyes "on the street" and to make sure you’re in touch with changes in demographics, buying habits, wants and needs. First, you need to decide what information is important to you. Then you need to figure out how to get it. Many people do this in the wrong order- they do their research on what information they can get, then try to figure out how to use it! Although you should take advantage of windfalls when they happen, don’t let the "tail wag the dog" by determining your needs based on what appears to be available at the moment.
What Information is Important To You?
You probably have done some research about a demographic profile of a person that is likely to buy your product. You have:
- Age range
- Income range
- Gender
- Geographic segment
- Other details (owns a home, owns a pet, has a particular hobby, etc.)
In addition to the above (which you have some assumptions about, you need to know: What they like about your product
- What they dislike about your product
- What would motivate them
to buy/buy more/buy again/refer others
Test Your Assumptions
It is vitally important to test your assumptions. If you get too comfortable with your assumptions about customers, you may be missing potential additional markets. You may not notice cultural, geographic, or income shifts in your market segments. You may not identify additional needs that your product could fill with minor revisions.
Additional Markets
Are your customers who you thought they’d be? You may have designed a product to be used for a particular purpose by a particular group, but may find that it’s not. For example, tiny, colored copper wires used in the telephone industry have been appropriated by school children for "friendship bracelets." A savvy crafts company has packaged small amounts of copper wire, together with an instruction sheet, as a profitable way of marketing an "old" product to a new market.
How Do You Get The Information You Need?
Here are some tried and true methods for collecting this information from customers, listed from "simple" to "complicated." Of course, there are as many variations on any of these themes as there are companies floating around in the world, so adapt and use what works for you.
The "Suggestion Box"
This can be as sophisticated as a software application connected to a website that collects, concatenates, categorizes and communicates results to the company, or as simple as a shoebox with a slot in the top. The basic premise is a solicitation of anonymous comments.
Depending on the location, ease of use, involvement level of customers, and a number of other factors, it’s possible to get some good ideas and/or statistical information this way.
Post-Purchase Surveys
This is the easiest way to ensure the information you get is from "real" customers- people who have actually bought your product, which ensures they’re in your market segment de facto.
Many products contain a "registration card" with as short survey that some people fill out, but only if it seems to offer some additional benefit.
Tips for post-purchase demographics:
- Offer something of value in exchange for the time and hassle of filling it out- this could be tied to the product’s warrantee (a very old traditional favorite) or money-saving offers on refills or accessories.
- Keep it short and easy. Checkboxes on a postage-paid postcard, or a web survey that asks a user to click a few preferences and then hit "enter" is about all you can expect from a customer without further compensation.
- Never use unnecessary questions. If you ask questions that seem nosy or personal (about income level, health conditions, marital status or anything that is outside the realm of polite dinner conversation, you must also:
- Explain why you’re asking for the information.
- Ensure anonymity explicitly and implicitly (don’t ask for a return address on the postcard, for example)
- Word the questions as sensitively as possible
"Business As Usual" Customer Interactions
Anytime anyone representing your company deals with a customer, they have the opportunity to get feedback, whether they like it or not! How well this information is communicated and used within the company is another story. We’ve all had experiences with companies where the sales and service departments don’t communicate without an act of God.
You can imagine that even useful suggestions from customers fall on deaf ears under the guise of "it’s not my department."
It’s worth your while to ensure that everyone in your company that interacts with customers presents themselves professionally and is receptive (and even encouraging) of input from customers. This works best when the staff is motivated (perhaps financially) by the overall success of the company. More relevant to this particular topic- ensure that they are motivated and equipped to collect, pass along, and follow up on customer comments, questions suggestions, and other information.
Focus Groups
Some companies host symposiums, user groups, and other forums to get to know their customers. One of the most famous of these is the Saturn automobile manufacturer, which invites customers to orientation picnics where they can eat corn on the cob and mingle with the Saturn staff members.
Others make appearances at trade shows where their products are discussed. Their main reason for being there is pure sales, but they may pick up an occasional comment or good idea from mingling with groups of people that actually use their products (or their competitor’s!)
Although focus groups can be expensive, creating the opportunity to mingle with buyers and users (as well as potential buyers) is well worth it for high-involvement products and services.
Partners and Resellers
An example of this type of arrangement would be Ikon Office Systems, which is a licensed provider and training center for Microsoft products. This type of relationship engages a third party between the product and the user, but also provides another opportunity to specialize in customer service.
If it’s done right, it can also facilitate two-way communication- the more rare and important of the two being the manufacturer getting information from consumers in a form that they can use. In a totally theoretical example, if Ikon provides training on a Microsoft product and finds that one menu item tends to give users problems, they can provide that information (based on a wide range of customer interactions) back to Microsoft as a suggestion to modify their product.
Another example of this is the independent sales model, like Avon, Tupperware, and Amway products. Consumers communicate with their salesperson, who then run their experiences up the flagpole to the parent company as suggestions for improving their sales success.
Conclusion
There are more options than ever for collecting and analyzing market
data. Technology has given us a whole set of tools that was unavailable to us even ten
years ago. The ethics of getting that data, and the decision-making process that it feeds,
is as old as commerce. Graphs, charts, statistics and data are all very well, but they are
only as good as the real-world decisions you can make from them- decisions that help you
provide products and services that your customers really want.
