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.