HOW TO UNDERSTAND SERIOUS CUSTOMERS AND WIN THEM

According to studies done by Technical Assistance Research Programs (TARP), it costs 5 times more to get new customers than retain existing ones. This statement says a lot about how difficult it is to attract new customers. And it gets more difficult when the customers in question, are the serious customers.

Read the following characteristics of the serious customers:

They check how you communicate:

The way your organization communicates says a lot about your organization, products and what customers can expect from you. The serious customers visit your website, your social network accounts like Facebook, Google Plus and twitter, they pay attention to lay out, the type of connections you have, the content of your information, how complete, clear, correct and helpful your information is. They can judge you from the marketing tools you use, and make their conclusions about you before they even engage with you.

Unfortunately in many cases conclusion of the serious customers about you will be right based on the image you display through your communication tools.

For instance, an out-dated website- a website which was last updated in 2010 may not send good information to the viewers, the same goes with irrelevant information, unclear information and poorly arranged information may mean your organization is unorganized or there is lack of professionalism and hence delivery of services and products will not be reliable and effective.

They prefer value

From an operations management perspective (as cited from the book  - Introduction to Business Management a book  by Cronjé, Du Toit, Marais, Motlatla) 

quality is defined as continuous conformance to customers/clients’ expectations  . 

Cronjé etal continue to describe quality as  

“the absolute best, something flawless, suitable for the purpose for which it was designed, meeting a set of measurable characteristics or good value for money”.

You need to understand that quality of your product is judged by serious customers  not only on the grounds of meeting certain generally accepted standards, but also the quality  on meeting the expectation of more benefits than the cost of acquiring your products. More benefits than the cost of acquiring your product is what the serious customers consider to be value.

Therefore apart from giving the customers a generic product, you must make sure that you give them a reason to think that they are getting more than what they actually pay for.  

For example, if you have a clothing store, you should not only be stocking ‘quality’ clothes but you may think of how to save your customers’ time when they are doing shopping, how you make it easy and quick to get the clothes they want, how you make the payment flexible, how you make the shopping experience more enjoyable in your shop by bringing entertainment etc.

They are well informed or they are ready to be well informed

The serious customers are constantly looking for new ways to maximize from their incomes, they are value conscious. They either know about other existing suppliers better than you or they are ready to look for information about possible existing suppliers who can beat your services and products. The serious customers can be very loyal to you if they know you are the best. 

They are selfish

Though the serious customers can be royal to you when you are the best, they don’t do this to please you. They do this because it favors them, because you give them what they want. Remember that they are well informed or at least they are ready to look for information for your substitute if you mess with them. You can read more about Selfishness of customers by clicking this link Customers are selfish

They share information about you

Because they are information conscious, the serious customers don’t mind to share what they know about you to anyone they feel like to do so. To them, any information about you is vital; it doesn’t matter whether the news about you is good or bad. This follows the famous marketing research fact cited from http://www.customerservicemanager.com:

“A satisfied customer will tell 2-3 people about his experience with your company. A dissatisfied consumer will share their crying with 8-10 people and some will push that number to 20”.

Conclusion

It is great to have serious customers around us, because they make organizations shape themselves as a result more value adding products are produced.

The emergency of social media and globalization are highly affecting the way organizations have been operating. More people are becoming serious customers.

Old ways of doing business and poor schemes of management such as corruption and reliance on favoritism are no longer helping many organizations. The governments are pushed down, new leaders are elected, new marketing tools are emerging, new technologies, currencies are falling and new laws are made, all these make the business environment more complicated because the changes are changing the way we define customers who are really the reasons for the existence of our organizations.

If you have not yet realized the concept of value and professionalism, it is high time now to change before the change changes you. Don’t lie yourself that you don’t need to change just because you are currently doing well with your organization; we have seen big organizations falling for the same mistakes you are currently making.

Change to value and professionalism, as these will help your organization to stay strong.