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Are your customers satisfied?

20 Aug

Are your customers satisfied?

  • Posted by vividano
  • 0 Comments
  • business, marketing

It’s one of those questions that are difficult to answer. But it is a seriously important one for most businesses. It is a plain fact that it costs much, much more to gain a new customer than it does to keep a current one. So, why would a business be prepared to risk losing customers when the cost of replacement is so much higher?

Ask yourself this question: “What proportion of our customers who were trading with us at the beginning of 2012 are still with us now?” If the answer is 70% plus, you are doing well, and on most considerations of quality, service, price etc your company is performing satisfactorily. But if you don’t know the answer and if your customer base is wide and you don’t have personal contact with the majority of them, it is vital that you seek their opinion.

Here’s what you can do. List the areas of competitive importance to your clients of the service you provide, turn them into short questions and then decide how you are going to ask them. You can use a mailshot (personal letter plus self completion survey), a web based survey, or if you have a sales team (in the field or on the phone) actually ask the questions directly. Many firms use a scoring system such a 5-point scale (very good, quite good, neither good nor bad, quite poor, very poor) to get a quantifiable response.

Think how enlightened you would be if you found a particular aspect of your service was poorly perceived! You could and you would do something about it wouldn’t you? We know that we cannot afford to take our customers for granted. An annually administered survey can keep your existing business as safe as it can be in the knowledge that what you provide meets the needs and wants of those precious assets we call clients.

Tony Wightman is Director of Wellwood Consulting, the business and marketing consultancy for SMEs in London and East Anglia.

For more information, visit www.wellwoodconsulting.co.uk or call Tony Wightman on 07831 609638

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