Stop Ignoring Customers

High end technologies, ease of availability and affordable prices of products and services that too with the delivery at your doorstep makes it tough competition for companies on the superior quality. Though there are companies bagging maximum customers providing pleasuring product experience with best quality. Only quality can’t help them achieve such an exceptional market share but the attention to their customers lays the foundation to their throne.

I won’t say that you are careless about your customer, but what I mean here is that we tend to ignore our customers once selling them the product. They get even more sensitive after they become a buyer since now they carry an experience with your product. Now, that you don’t know if they had a good or bad experience they might act as a promoter or a demoter.

The customer experience has been given theoretically a priority but are you walking in the right direction? Probably, no!

Improving the customer experience is a strategic priority for 73% of businesses, yet only one percent of companies deliver an excellent customer experience, per the 2015 Forrester Research Customer Experience. So, almost all of the companies fail to implement of what they plan to produce as an excellent customer experience.

Let’s use reverse psychology to understand how we are ignoring what our customer says. Using a few assumptions and cases we will try to justify the need for a reality check on “you might be ignoring your customers”. So, the question is, what really happens if we choose to ignore the ‘voice of customer’?

Taking the first case, when your company is dominating the market, enjoying the utmost supremacy in your field. In such a monopolistic market, you choose to unhear what the customer has to say. You start assuming to know everything of what the need of the customer is. Maybe your product does not satisfy the whole purpose but merely fulfilling the basic need.

“Your company tend to believe that your customer will stay forever.”

But, the demand and need changes with time, the guidelines are shifting continuously that too across all the parameters of your product and services. You may become, or are the market thoughtleaders but ultimately your customers are responsible for taking you to that position. You just can’t afford to assume what they need all the time but stay in continuous touch with them. Your customers will guide you through the change.

Moving onto the second scenario when you’re facing a massive contest and the market is divided.

“Your company is battling competitions at every nook and corner.”

You are trying to evaluate and iterate on your product to develop a quality experience for your customers but still it is not paying off, and you assume to search the answer on your own without considering the fact that your customer might provide solutions to you with their valuable feedback.

However to continue in such a manner could quite possibly be the quickest way to ‘company suicide’. In fact according to Forbes Magazine, 87% of companies that made the Fortune 500 in 1955 have disappeared. Over that same period, the average lifetime of a company has shrunk from 75 to 15 years.

“A customer practically uses your product and tracks the real-time performance vigorously since they have paid for it.”

Your competitors might lack something that your products provide and neither your products suffice with all the demands of the customer. But if you give your customers one chance to help you out from this situation, they won’t ever fail. They know the differences of why they prefer your product over any other and why do they choose other than your products. The question raised is, are you providing the leeway to your customers to connect to you and helping them to figure out what you’re missing? So, if you’re ignoring them, it won’t fetch you anything but take you back to the square one. Maintain a healthy relationship with your customers and ask them the right questions to keep yourself updated on their very basic needs.

Even if you ignored your customer and they get angry with it, they don’t miss a chance to express their experience with your brand. Availability of open social media channels, seamless connection and massive network opens an opportunity for them to express against about you, these social media channels erupt a conversation that if gone against you, can smudge the brand in hours because of the high volatility of web media. So, overlooking the social media aspect can become sloppy for you at times, so please don’t get mistaken to assume that social media feedback can’t get serious for you.

These customers make most of the influence and paint a whole new picture of your company in front of all the audience. Ignoring these customers can devalue you even before you are given a chance to make a reality check. These social media channel feedback needs to be addressed and tapped on regular basis as they send a positive message of being a responsible company. But if you keep ignoring them, you might lose onto the goodwill you have maintained and established in years.

Armed with product and pricing information customers are comparison shopping like never before. More than 74% customers say that they have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer service experiences and 68% are willing to spend on an average 14% more for that kind of experience. Customer retention is clearly dependent on customer experience. In an article in Harvard Business Review presents the annual revenue increase per customer based on his or her customer-experience score. If your score goes to 7 from 1, your revenue per customer increases to 50% and it goes to 140% for improving to a complete scale of 10. So, now if you choose to ignore your customers, the customers will ignore to spend on you too.