Know Your Customer!!

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  You'd think every business would know who their customers are and equally as important, what they want.  But unfortunately many do not.  And the consequence is that the brand and the products do not satisfy the customer's needs.


How many customers are new, and how many are repeat?  Where did they learn about your business?  Where are they from?  How did they enjoy your product or service?  Would they recommend you to a friend?


Not knowing answers to simple questions like these is akin to bowling in the dark!  You know you're hitting the pins, but........


Many so called customer surveys are of little value.  The hotel room comment card, the restaurant check wallet survey, the on-line comment card - they provide customer feedback, but they are not representative samples of the customer universe.  They may provide meaningful customer feedback, but that's about it.



An accurate customer survey must measure a representative sample of the universe of customers, or an identified customer segment.  The survey sample must be chosen randomly to be statistically representative of the entire universe of customers.  Thus a restaurant survey taken on Friday and Saturday nights is just that - a survey of Friday and Saturday customers.  This is not representative of all the customers that eat at the restaurant seven days a week.


To obtain a random representative sample one would survey restaurant customers seven days a week,  and collect a higher number of questionnaires on Friday and Saturday to account for the greater number of diners on those days.


Businesses also often make the mistake of asking open ended questions, which are impossible to tabulate into any sort of empirical analysis.  They may be acnecdotally beneficial, but that's about it.


A better approach is to use a rating scale, say from 1 to 5, or 1 to ten.  These responses can then be tabulated and analyzed.


With the advent of social media there's a whole new aspect of market research being developed.  While some tools are free, others are proprietary and fee based.  Radian6 and Forrester are two firms that offer comprehensive web customer and market research.


From customer demographic profiles to online conversation monitoring and summarization, these platforms and others like them scour the web for relevant data using "crawlers" to recognize certain words and phrases, what are then tabulated and summarized.


Amazing stuff.  Just remember, though, this data is representative of web users and may be quite a bit different from actual customer profiles.