Tapping into your customer base to learn what they need is critical to competitiveness. These 7 steps will help you get there.
Listening to your customers and to the business can be the critical difference between winning and losing. The right methodology, the right data, and the right tools can help you listen to your business -- and even smaller companies have more data available today than ever before.
Today, you may glean information from the Internet, occasional market research published online, or stories from your salesforce. That's a good start. But getting deep customer insights takes more. We believe that tapping into your customer base to know what they're thinking or feeling or -- best yet -- needing is critical to competitiveness. These 7 steps will help you get there.
1. Secondary Research: New Ways To Get Insight
There are a bunch of places to get insights on market trends. Deep-dive secondary business research that was previously unavailable is now available online by using the business collections held in JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization that has an archive of important scholarly journals. Access is available through many public and private universities.Google Questions has been retired, but Yahoo Answers provides free answers on a host of topics. Uclue and Ask Metafilter, which claims to put you in direct contact with the "hive mind," both answer questions for a nominal fee.
A wide variety of research can be purchased or subscribed to online, including reports from analyst firms such as Yankee Group, Jupiter Research, Gartner, and others. O'Reilly Radar is a favorite tech blog -- it's insightful, well-written, and they've got a great crystal ball.
Don't Miss: An Online Guide to Market Research
2. Primary Research: DIY Surveys And Listening To Your Business
If you're a hands-on type, there are now easy ways to listen to your customer base. You can do primary research easily using customer surveys online. Until recently, the process for conducting market research was slow and expensive. New survey hosting companies make it possible to do most of the work online, with much greater speed. Construct a survey and invite your customers to come to a Web site and fill it out. The survey design itself can be done online, with almost immediate access. Make sure the company you choose can handle your needs. Look for a survey design tool that you're comfortable with and a good online FAQ. Check to see that the company provides support before you subscribe. Using sites like those listed in the research resources sidebar, it's actually possible to run a survey from start to finish in just five business days.
3. Ask The Tough Questions
It's time to get uncomfortable. Don't just research how much your customers like your products. Ask how they feel about your tech support, the complaints they have about the channel, the service they received from their sales rep, and the features that irritate them the most. Think about how your competition could use those weaknesses to steal your market share, and develop a get-well plan so that doesn't happen.
Next Page: Real Insight Is Driven By Data
