How well do you listen to what your customers have to say?
It’s easy to hang on every positive word a customer utters, and quietly dismiss any negative criticisms, but as Richard Branson points out in this short interview segment with Seth Godin, listening to all customer feedback should be part of your business strategy.
Listening is Free
In the past week we’ve featured many ways for you to save your business money, but listening may be one of the best uses of your energy. And the best part of it is, listening is free!
Mr. Branson points out that when you really listen to what your customers have to say you’re opening yourself up to a world of innovative ideas. Think about it, customers tell us:
- What we’re doing well
- What we can do better
- What they’d like to see us do
- What they have no interest in
- What’s important to them
- What’s not
- What they’d pay more for
- What they think should be cheaper
Customers give us all the information we need to get better for free.
Put More Smart People on Your Team
A concept that struck me during this clip was that some of your customers, my customers, our customers – are smarter than we are. They may be better at business, have more skills, or just plain brilliant, and that’s a good thing.
When we listen to their ideas we are effectively adding more smart people to our team to make us better. Usually in order to get smart people on your team you have to pay them – sometimes a lot – but that’s not the case with customers.
They willing share their thoughts and ideas with us for free, and then we can pick and choose the best ideas to implement. It doesn’t get better than having a perpetual think tank giving us fresh ideas about our business from people smarter than we are.
Granted not all feedback or ideas will be good ones, and our job will be to know the difference. But it begins with listening, and when something that doesn’t cost a dime and only takes a small amount of my time, can radically change my business, I’m on board.
Are you listening?
Photo Credit: striatic
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“You don’t need to hear what comes out of your own month…you know what you know!” per your videopost of Richard Branson. So True!
What your customers are telling you if you are listening …is what you don’t know and because you “don’t know” there would be no chance of you coming up with the solution…ha!
One more step that a business owner could do is to give back by recognizing those customers with the ideas you chose to implement…turning them into RAVING FANS and talking billboards!
Thanks for the quick and too the point post!
sheila b
“It doesn’t get better than having a perpetual think tank giving us fresh ideas about our business from people smarter than we are.”
Right! What more do you want?
Matt,
In my previous life, I owned and operated a paramedic school. We offered a lot of different EMS course as well and absolutely the best tool I had was the course feedback form. I found out what worked and what didn’t, which adjunct faculty to keep and feedback regarding value for services received.
During that time period I also had the great fortune to participate on the national lecture circuit with two heavy hitters. After the first session I taught with them I observed something that made a profound impression on me. As soon as the session was complete, those two immediately gathered the survey forms that had been handed out. The were salivating to see the feedback. That drove home the importance of listening to the customer.
Cheers,
George
I worked in the IT department of a company that sold software. One of our clients wanted to know how we ran these different products so we started sending people from IT to the different clients. It was almost funny because the sales people wanted to hover, to make sure we didn’t screw up a sale by telling the truth (like, “No, our product does not do that yet.”)
Once with the client we heard the things that they wanted and since IT and the development were really closely hooked the programmers started hearing client requests from people that were not trying to make a sale. In my opinion there were a lot of great developments and fixes because of IT going to our clients.
This going to our clients thing used to be called IT Showcase and last I heard it was called IT insite or some such branded name. Ask any Microsoft sales person to speak to an IT person and it will happen. In fact we flew one of the people that ran our Exchange servers from Redmond to Istanbul, Turkey for a sales call. For a big client, all things are possible.
@Shelia
I love that – if you impliment a customers idea, give them credit for it. You will, as you say, turn them into walking billboards for your compnay. And as we all know, word of mouth is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Everyone wins!
Matt
@Stephen
For me, that’s plenty!
Matt
@Tumblemoose
And I bet they were making adjustments and changes in the next lecture based on the feedback they got from the prior one. Very smart, and probably a big reason they were “heavy hitters”.
Matt
@Mac
That’s a great story, and perfect example of what we are talking about here. In that case, who knows better than the user what they want? And when you start having customer feedback go directly to product development you end up with an end product that more people will use, enjoy, etc.
Thanks for commenting,
Matt
Your clients are your best judges. Their thoughts and opinions are what keeps any business going.
Besides the regular feedback forms, you can also set it up to allow your clients to vote on features and improvements. This would allow the majority vote to get done the quickest.
Everyone should take their customers thoughts to heart.
Listening to your customers is indeed free or if we use feedback forms, will only cost a little. This is a simple but powerful entrepreneurship style that every business owners should apply. Thanks for the sharing.