Meeting Customers' Needs

Philip Wexler said "If the goal of every business is to make money, then the function of every business - and of every person in every business - is the acquisition and maintenance of customers". Therefore we can conclude that every company is successful in business depending on how well it serves its customers, and as such those customers should always be at the forefront of everything the business does. Unfortunately it can sometimes be the case that everyone assumes it's everyone else's responsibility to attend to the needs of the customer. The managers assume it's the job of the front line employees, and the employees assume it's the job of the managers who come up with the policies and ways of working in the first place.

In truth everyone is responsible for how well a business meets its customers' needs, and a team effort is liable to boost the fortunes of a business even more successfully, since people tend to flock to those businesses which clearly pay attention to what they need and provide it to them as well.

The success or failure of a business depends on how well it rises to the challenge of meeting its customers' needs, and to that end it should be understood that the process is a two way one. Your own view of how your business can serve its customers may be very different from the views and opinions your customers have, which is why you should take every opportunity to engage with your customers and ask their opinions of how you are performing - even if you don't like some of the answers!

Part of the role of an effective leader is also to engage with everyone in the company, to spread the idea that you should all be looking for new ways to serve the customers even better than you do at present. It doesn't matter if you are the best company in your field; if you don't make the effort to stay on top of the pile you can bet that someone else will figure out how to serve those customers even better and you will be knocked off the top spot quicker than you might think possible.

Meeting those needs can be done in a variety of ways, but every method you use should always begin with a deep understanding of who your customer is. Without this understanding all the improvements you make will be based purely on guesswork, meaning that while some of your efforts will succeed, others could fail and represent a huge amount of time wasted.

Take the time to get in touch with your customer base and ask them what services they would like to see in the future. Perhaps you could provide an incentive to encourage more replies.

It is clear that if you want to continually meet the needs of your customers you need to be pro-active in discovering what those needs are and deciding the best way to meet them. This is something every employee can be involved in, from taking part in a simple ideas process to helping to implement a new way of working that could make a big difference to customer satisfaction.

There is always much to be learned in any business, and customer satisfaction is a big part of its continued success. Put simply, the business that creates the best "buying environment" for their customers, based on the satisfaction of their needs and wants, will win the most customers and turn them into repeat clients.

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