How Happy Clients Can Make You Money

Many businesses rely on their existing clients for repeat business. However, do you truly understand what your customers think about your business? Do you know why they chose to come to you in the first place? Or what, if anything they think makes you different from your competitors?

Research has shown that it costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one (Bain & Company). By understanding your existing clients you can work towards building upon and improving their experience by ensuring you keep them happy. This in turn will improve the experience for new clients who will benefit from the improvements and recommendations implemented from the client research.

What is Client Research?

Client research provides a means for your clients to express any concerns they may have, how they feel about certain areas of your business and gain feedback on any proposed changes within your business. And if it’s independent, they will be more honest than if you conduct it yourself. Client research can include areas such as:

·         Their understanding of the services available

·         Levels of customer service

·         What your company is doing right

·         Are there any areas they feel your company could improve upon?

·         Their thoughts on a proposed new product range

Why Conduct Client Research?

As a business it’s easy to become complacent, thinking “our clients keep coming back to us so they must be happy”. But what happens if there’s something they think you could improve upon, or you make a change thinking it will improve things for your clients when in reality it makes things more difficult for them?

Whilst a happy customer is likely to return for repeat business and may give you the benefit of the doubt when they first encounter a negative experience, if this negative experience is repeated they may go elsewhere, without giving you the opportunity to correct this.

You may have some aggressive competitors or new entrants to your market that are marketing heavily to your clients. Client research can tell you whether those competitors are addressing issues that your clients have and that you are not currently taking into consideration.

By conducting client research and acting upon the feedback you will be able to demonstrate that you value your clients and their opinions, therefore creating a more open business relationship whereby they feel they can discuss issues with you. 

How can you conduct Client Research?

As with all research, it’s important to have a clear objective; an understanding of what you want to find out from the research and how you will act upon this information.

Once your objectives have been identified, there are a number of consideration:

·         Sample Size – The closer you get to the total market number, the more robust your sample will be (and thus, the validity of the results typically increases too). The general rule of thumb is 100 responses or a minimum of 10% of your total targeted market. So, if you have 300 clients, 30 is a minimum base to use, or if you have 20,000, you may opt for a smaller survey of around 100 clients.

·         Representative Sample - In order to gain a fair representation of your clients’ views it is important to ensure you speak to a variety of contacts within your database. A long-term client who has used your business for over 10 years is likely to have a different opinion to a client who has only recently started to use your business.

·         Question Design – The questions can be quantitative – box ticking answers – qualitative – asking their opinions with open ended questions that allow them to say whatever they like or it can be a combination of the two.

·         Interviews / Surveys – Consider whether telephone interviews or printed surveys are the best option. The use of telephone interviews will enable the interviewer to probe for additional information on answers where necessary but this can also be a more time-consuming exercise.

·         Timing – Your clients will have their own work to complete which will take priority over completing your client research. Allow your clients to choose a time that suits them best, and give them the opportunity to rearrange if necessary.

·         Set Expectations – Tell your clients approximately how long the survey will take to complete so they can plan their time accordingly.

·         Communication – To encourage your clients to participate, tell them why you are conducting the research, what you are hoping to learn and how you will act upon the results. Make it clear that you will be listening to their views and will feedback to them once the research has been completed.

·         Appreciation – Thank your clients for their opinions and make them feel appreciated.

·         External Input – Your clients may be more likely to give an open and honest opinion if the research is conducted by an external person. The results from the research can then be reported anonymously.

What do you do with the results?

This will depend partly on the actual feedback provided through the research process.

If feedback from your research is positive, it shows that you are doing a good job and making your clients happy. However, it is important that the business understands what it is that the client says you are doing well so that these factors are not overlooked in the future. It is also unlikely that your research will show that every single client is 100% happy with every element of your business and there is always room for improvement.

Client research may also identify areas for improvement such as:

·         A lack of consistency in the application of processes within your business

·         Personality clashes between clients and employees

·         A lack of client understanding of other products/services offered by your business

·         Clients not fully understanding how a process works

·         Clients feeling that they aren’t communicated with

Regardless of the outcome it is important to communicate the results of your research both internally, so your employees can act upon the feedback and externally, to demonstrate to your customers that you care.

If you would like to discuss how client research can help your business, give us a call today.  

Karen Munson is Strategic Officer at Enterprise Marketing Solutions and contactable on 01296 695635 or Karen.munson@enterprisemarekting.co.uk. 

Getting Inside Your Clients’ Head

We are all individuals with our own views, expectations and limitations. As a business have you stopped to consider things from the perspective of your clients, prospects and employees? How are they likely to react to your latest news, marketing campaign, product launch or any other activity?

On Friday, my 5-year old came running out of school with a massive grin; Max the Bear was coming to stay for the weekend. Max is the class bear and each weekend he goes to a child’s home to join in with their family activities which are then reported in Max’s diary through a combination of photos, drawings and writing.

Whilst discussing this with my son, we decided that as it’s Max’s diary, it should be written from Max’s perspective. After all, how a bear views the world could be very different to a 5-year old child. I wasn’t entirely sure how well this would work, however, after a couple of activities I can honestly say that Max started to express his own opinions about whether he wanted to join in. For example at a birthday party Max was scared that the other children would hurt him as he was smaller than them, so he sat on the side watching until he was happy to join in.

The same principal needs to be applied in your business.

“Getting inside your client’s head” helps you understand what makes them tick, how they view your business and how they are likely to respond to various events. When you create an avatar for your “ideal client”, all of your marketing activity can then be created with this person in mind. This is all about them, not about you!

Consider an IT company providing support to small businesses. Let’s say their ideal client is “Bob”, the owner of a small company who is involved in running all aspects of the company. Bob is always rushing around making sure the business is operating as efficiently as possible and has very little time to spend understanding how the IT works, he just needs to know that it works. As a small business owner, Bob often works outside normal office hours, so he is concerned about having IT issues and not having support available. He is therefore looking for a company to look after all his IT requirements and get his business back up and running if and when anything goes wrong with his IT.

Bob has been told about 2 local companies that offer IT Support for small businesses so looks at their websites to find out more. Which company do you think Bob would be more likely to approach regarding his needs?

Company A

The website looks professional and includes lots of technical information. The case studies and testimonials focus on larger companies and how the company has helped to support IT departments within organisations.

Company B 

Uses clear and easy-to-understand language and includes case studies and testimonials from companies of a similar size to “Bob’s”. The site looks clean, is easy to navigate and each page displays clear contact details including an out-of-hours number for 24-7 support.

It’s clear to me that Bob would choose to contact Company B. They have understood the main concerns for small business owners like Bob such as lack of time and the need for 24-7 support and demonstrated how they have helped similar businesses.

If you would like to discuss how Enterprise Marketing Solutions can help you “get inside your client’s head” to help your business grow, give us a call today.  

Karen Munson is Strategic Officer at Enterprise Marketing Solutions and contactable on 01296 695635 or Karen.munson@enterprisemarekting.co.uk.