Think Like a Customer

In December 2000, Paramount Pictures released the movie “What Women Want.” Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt starred as competing advertising execs working within the same agency, challenged to come up with a campaign idea for Nike, targeted at women.

Through a freak accident, Gibson finds he can suddenly hear what women are thinking but not saying. He uses the women’s secret thoughts to develop ad ideas and slogans that connect with women. In the process, he realizes how off-target he was in the way he used to think when developing ad campaigns.

The result is, he starts to think like the customer.

It is one of the most important lessons a business can learn. Say what customers want to hear, and they listen.

Thinking like a customer should drive every decision you make regarding business development, product presentation and marketing. Before making a final decision, ask yourself, “Why is this good for our customers?”

The movie “What Women Want” was hugely successful. It was produced on a budget of $40 million and generated revenues of $374.1 million, a 935% return on investment! There’s no guarantee that if you provide customers with what they want your ROI will jump to 935%, but it is certainly guaranteed to improve.

So, what do customers want? Here are some universal ways to please a customer.

Don’t waste their time. Despite the bad economy, people are still more time poor than money poor. If you are face-to-face with a customer keep the conversation focused on what’s important to them. Let them know how your product or service will make their life better. That’s what they want to know. If you are a destination be sure you have clear signage and easy access to information so they know how to get where they are going.

Another place to not waste their time is on your Web site. When people go to a Web site they are looking for information (if it is a static site), or they are looking to make a purchase (if it is a dynamic site). Make your information easy to find. Make your site easy to navigate. Keep the process streamlined.

If you do e-commerce, be sure your process from product search to checkout and payment is seamless. Make it easy for customers to change their mind without having to cancel the transaction and start over. Research from 2007, the most recent year with facts available, shows that 60% of online purchases are abandoned. That is a staggering percentage.

12% are abandoned prior to checkout and 48% are abandoned at checkout. That 48% figure represents people who chose to buy something, but found the process too cumbersome, frustrating or confusing to complete the transaction. Think about what it means to lose 48% of sales because of the process!

I abandoned the Go Daddy site this week at the point of purchase. I had what I wanted, I was in the checkout process, but they kept interrupting it and throwing more and more options and decisions at me, so I quit in frustration and found a different alternative.

My favorite example of an online retailer who has everything set up perfectly is Amazon.com. Check out their site if you want to see how to do it right. In the many years of doing business with them everything has always been perfect. Even the customer service!

If you are a destination site you need to think like a visitor who has never been to your destination before. Whether you are an entertainment venue, a restaurant or a community, there are several consistent things people go online to find out. These include: where you are located, your hours of operation, the cost of admission and what there is to do. (For restaurants this relates to type of food served and menu price ranges.)

And for all Web sites there is one universal need that many totally overlook — contact information beyond the site. Every site should list their physical address and phone number. It adds legitimacy to the business and reinforces that a customer can deal with a real person if necessary.

Customers want to be acknowledged. The lack of acknowledgement is one of the biggest reasons most people consider the phrase “customer service” to be an oxymoron. Phone system prompts can take up to 3 minutes and still not get the caller connected to a real person. Companies that provide service by phone often have waits of 20-45 minutes before a real person answers. [Tip: To find out how to get through to a person immediately go to gethuman.com for a list of numbers for most major businesses.]

If you are a retail or service business with walk-in customers, you should acknowledge them within 3 seconds. To not acknowledge them is the same as ignoring them. It is an insult and shows you don’t care.

Look for the “pain.” Pain is the unspoken reason a customer is interested in what you sell. When you can take away the pain in a customer’s life, you’ll have a sale. It is generally accepted that you will deliver on the promise of what your product or service will do. Looking deeper, to understand the emotional reason that motivates the interest is key to thinking like a customer. It is perhaps one of the best lessons you can learn from the movie “What Women Want.”

Taking away the pain is classically positioned as selling the benefits and not the features. However, it takes the benefits to a secondary, more personal level. The wedding industry is a great example of the secondary level. Anyone planning a wedding makes dozens of purchases decisions from the wedding and reception locations to flowers to gown to food. Each choice is made at the primary level of what is desired and needed for the type of wedding being planned and the budget, if there is one.

The unspoken secondary level is that each bride wants her wedding to be the most beautiful, memorable, and best wedding any of her guests ever attended and the most perfect day of her life. Every industry has a secondary level of what customers want, although few approach their selling or marketing with an understanding of this level.

Be patient with customers. The acquisition of a new customer is rarely an instantaneous happening. Customers need to be given time, need to be reassured, need to build trust with you. This is key to building a relationship that will create customer loyalty for you.

If customers don’t buy immediately, have a system for keeping in touch. Let them know you haven’t forgotten them and that you still care about their needs.

Don’t talk down to a customer. It is very easy, when you are developing advertising or marketing information, to make assumptions about what customers do and don’t know. The best approach is to provide all information a customer needs, in a way that is not insulting to the more knowledgeable customers, yet is clear and easy to understand for the less knowledgeable customers.

When dealing with a customer in a face-to-face situation you have the advantage of asking questions to help you understand the level of knowledge your customer has. Just be sure that you ask questions in a way that shows interest and a desire to be helpful instead of quizzing them to show off your superior knowledge.

Get the customer’s name right. It is important when meeting with a customer for the first time to get his or her name, have a system for remembering it and being sure you know how to pronounce and spell it. At the most base level, what each of us wants is to be known. As the title song from the TV show “Cheers” claims, you want to go “where everybody knows your name.”

If you are looking for ways to get more customers, one of the best strategies you can employ is to think like a customer. Do that and before you know it, your customers will be telling people about how wonderful you are!

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