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00:16 – Avoiding ‘apples to apples’ comparisons
1:22 – Becoming a premium supplier, backed by a powerful USP and stand-alone marketing message
1:56 – Why it is important to get customer feedback?
2:20 – 10 simple ways to get fast & relevant customer feedback
6:35 – Short recap
Hi this is Fiona Soutter from Super Savvy Business and welcome to this week’s business news update.
00:16 – Avoiding ‘apples to apples’ comparisons
One of the things that’s come up this week in the Savvy Mastermind program is ‘How can you charge a higher price than your competitors and not have your customers question you?’
Well, it all comes down to ensuring that you are not providing apples compared to apples. At the end of the day it’s your job to differentiate your offering so that your consumers can’t compare what you are offering directly to your competitors. Otherwise it will all come down to price and what your consumers believe they are getting for the price.
It is your job to educate them about the differences between your offering and your competitors’. You have to clearly articulate why your X is not the same as the other X because of features A, B and C, and the benefits which come from that.
Don’t be afraid of high prices; be afraid of your inability to see the forest from the trees. If you keep battling a war against prices, then that’s the fastest way to the bottom.
1:22 – Becoming a premium supplier, backed by a powerful USP and stand-alone marketing message
There will always be a budget supplier of anything; a budget supplier that’s not interested in providing the very best for the customer or a premium service – a premium service that has the best interest of the client in the long term. In my mind it’s all about striving to do battle on your own terms. Develop a strong USP; develop a core list of why your primary offering is unlike anything out there on the market place. Spend the time to create a marketing message that separates you from all the other competitors out there.
1:56 – Why it is important to get customer feedback?
Another thing that we talked about this week was the importance of getting customer feedback. Why customer feedback? There are several reasons.
First, by getting customer feedback, you’ll be able to look at the trends that are going on in your marketplace.
It will also help you to make decisions about product. It’s about planning for the future and about tracking, because you must track what is going on in your business.
2:20 – 10 simple ways to get fast & relevant customer feedback
1. 2:29 – Surveying your leaving clients:
Some of the common methods are surveyin
g your clients – that survey could happen after point of purchase, it can happen after the point of purchase; you can also survey your customers when they leave you.
So let’s say a customer is cancelling working with you – it’s a really good idea to actually ask them, ‘Why are you leaving us?’, because you can get some really great feedback.
Sometimes it might be feedback about your price point, or perhaps the timing is not right, or perhaps you didn’t have certain features or offerings that they needed.
But take all of this on board; it’s all really important information.
2. 3:05 – Making use of help tickets and customer service as a way to get feedback
Another place to get customer feedback is through help tickets, or if you have a customer service desk through the sorts of queries the people are asking when they phone up to get a problem result. Keep track of this and see if there are certain topics that keep coming up again and again. This feedback can be really valuable.
3. 3:25 – Using the internet to ‘spy’ for reviews
Another place to look at is reviews, have a look at product reviews. How are people looking about your company, about your product and your service – whether this is online or in magazines? Keep an eye up for these and perhaps set up Google Alerts to see how people are reviewing your product or service online.
4. 3:43 – Contacting customers for feedback
Of course, one thing which we should never forget is getting feedback from customers in person. So whether or not it’s when you’re having a meeting with them, perhaps ring them out of the blue and ask them if they wouldn’t mind sharing a bit of information with you. Perhaps if you go to networking meetings as well – it’s another great moment to get feedback from your customers.
5. 4:03 – Analyzing your blog comments
Of course, if you run a blog or a news section on your website have a look at the sorts of comments that people are leaving because you can most likely get a good idea of feedback from your customers from your blog as well.
6. 4:18 – The secret tip: using feature request forms
Some of the less known places that you might want to get feedback from are through feature request forms. You may send them out to your existing database and ask them what sort of features they would like to see in your business.
7. 4:30 – Putting forms & feature requests at your clients’ disposal
The other place you might want to put a form or feature request is simply on your website. On your contact page have one little button for feature requests. Make it easy for people to contact you in this way.
8. 4:44 – Socializing with your followers on Social Media
Don’t ignore the social platforms. Make sure that you are interacting socially with your clients online using Social Media, whether that is through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, whatever it works for you and your clients. Get into conversations with them, ask them questions and listen carefully to their feedback. You’ll be amazed what people are prepared to share especially on the social platforms.
9. 5:10 – Asking your team about customers’ feedback
One area that many businesses ignore is the sort of feedback they can get from their internal teams, especially if you have teams that are working directly with your clients. So go back to those people who are working face-to-face with clients or one-to-one with them, the people who are picking up the phones and answering their queries and helping them to solve their problems. Have a meeting with those people within your team and make sure you get feedback from them because they are the ones that are hearing day-in, day-out what your customers want, how they are talking about you and your business.
10. 5:46 – Creating a custom advisory board
Finally one thing you might want to consider if you have a large enough client base is to create a custom advisory board. This is where you develop a group or a cross-section of your customers that form a very typical, cross-section of the sort of customers that you have and maybe ask to meet them on a regular basis to provide feedback for you. You might give them suggestions of the sort of things you are thinking about for the future or perhaps the way things are now and ask them to give you some feedback. This can be a really powerful strategy, but obviously you need to have a large enough client base to be able to bring in a cross-section of people to get a good idea, making sure that you are not just getting the opinions of one or two.
6:35 – Short recap
So that’s all we have for our business news update this week. They are only two points, but they are very important points and if you take time just thinking about one of those you could make some massive differences within your business.
My name is Fiona Soutter and we’ll see you in next week’s Super Savvy Business news update.