NEW YORK, NY / AGILITYPR.NEWS / June 16, 2020 / In the end, we are all just trying to please our customers. Right?

Free Insight, at Your Fingertips.

Every year companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars doing market research. Why not? Of course every business owner wants to be ahead of the game, especially when it comes to anticipating the changing needs of existing clients and prospects. These insights can increase visibility, sales, and client satisfaction. While this research is certainly a worthwhile investment, many companies forget to take advantage of one particularly valuable, and potentially free, resource: their customers.

When it comes to determining what consumers want, who knows better than the consumers themselves? Take the time to ask your customers and identified prospects about what their needs are and about their experience with you and/or your competitors. Consider the following questions when engaging with your clientele:

1. Did you find everything you needed okay? This question doesn’t just apply to brick and mortar retail stores – make sure your website is user-friendly, and find out if there’s another service or product offering opportunity that would make sense to add to your business.
2. Would you improve anything about your experience working with us? We all like to hear praise, but constructive criticism is incredibly important to maintain a competitive business model. If your clients have a problem, consider this an opportunity for growth. Addressing and resolving a client pain-point will show your customers that you genuinely care.
3. Have you done business with any of our competitors in the past? Find out who you’re competing with in the market. What marketing efforts are they investing in that is getting them this traffic? Why did the interviewee leave them? If you find out that a competitor’s clients are switching vendors find out why and leverage it. If they left because the support at “Company A” was lacking, make sure you beef up those services to better serve your new prospects.
4. What is your budget? These answers might surprise you. By acknowledging the budget of your buyers you can adjust your marketing efforts and even your products/services in reaction to these data insights. For example, if you determine that a lot of your prospect’s budgets are much higher than your asking price, consider developing a more enhanced service or product at a higher price bracket for this elite tier of your customer base.
5. Do you want to participate in future surveys? Responsive customers willing to donate their time to leave you feedback are worth their weight in GOLD. Once you find these treasured assessors don’t let them go! If you’re lucky they will help you with future polls.

In addition to these recommended prompts, you should consider questions that are hyper-relevant to your business. For example, consider this survey posted by Lounge Lizard Worldwide (LLW), a marketing agency and website development company. LLW was interested in investigating what potential clients were willing to invest in when it came to their digital presence. To get to the bottom of this query, LLW asked 300 companies about their budget, the services they thought would deliver the highest ROI, what their KPIs were, and the status of their current online presence efforts (or lack thereof).

Interested in seeing the results of their survey? Click here to view the article and infographic.