Admit it: at some point in your professional life, you’ve felt frustrated enough with your customers that you thought of them as the enemy. This is especially true if you’ve ever worked in customer service.
There’s nothing wrong with having a moment of weakness. But if you haven’t felt like you understand the customer’s plight in too long, it’s time to get back inside your customer’s head, figure out what makes them tick, and start delivering the goods.
Doing so won’t just help you better understand your customers, it’ll make you better at selling to potential customers, too. Here’s how to make it happen.
Don’t Just Put Yourself in Your Customers’ Shoes — Actually Become a Customer
You’ll see that phrase thrown around a lot: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. But there’s a very big difference between a five-minute brainstorming session and being in the literal position of a customer.
Blogger Roman Randall wrote that taking up swimming while working for a swimwear company helped him get an inside edge. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s always a way for you to get involved from the customer’s side — even if it means buying a product from yourself just to get an idea of what the experience is like.
Heck, even Mel Gibson’s ad executive character tried on lingerie in “What Women Want.” Maybe you don’t have to go quite that far, but always look to go the extra mile.
Find an Emotional Connection, Not a Logical One
According to Psychology Today, a professor of neuroscience at USC posited that emotion isn’t just an important factor for customers, but is a necessary ingredient in almost every decision we make.
Your product or service might have a logical advantage. But unless it hooks your audience emotionally, it’s not going to connect.
For example, McDonald’s sells burgers, but you’d barely know that from this advertisement.
What they’re really selling here is the feeling of being a kid again.
What do your products or services satisfy when it comes to emotions, and how can you tap into that need?
Knowledge is Power, and So Are Analytics
You might think you know what your customer wants. But when you run effective analytics on your website and your customer behavior, the math may end up proving you wrong.
Even if you simply start using Google Analytics, it’s a step in the right direction. The mere act of measuring and quantifying your customer behavior will give you more insight into what they want than any customer survey ever will. Acquire a Working Understanding of Customer Psychology and Persuasion
If you haven’t read Robert Cialdini’s Influence — widely considered a seminal book on the matter — do yourself a favor and spend about $11 changing the way you view your customers.
In his book, Cialdini expounds on critical concepts of persuasion that are just as relevant today as when the book was written. He’s even updated his material with Pre-Suasion.
The gist? There are many ways to influence customer behavior, even if they’re already aware of the fact that they’re being persuaded. That’s why the McDonald’s commercial above still works. We know it’s an attempt to make us feel a certain way. But damn if it doesn’t work.
What is the art of persuasion, as defined here? It means looking for the psychological aspects of sales that actually influence customer behavior.
For example, during the “New Coke” marketing efforts in the 1980s, Coca-Cola found that customers often preferred the new flavor when told it was something new and, therefore, exclusive. But “New Coke” was a disaster in the marketplace. Without the idea of exclusivity, it affected how people perceived the flavor.
What’s affecting how your customers perceive your product/service, and what can you do to change it?
Stop Giving Customers So Many Choices
Remember the last time you used Netflix? If you’re a “Netflix browser,” you went through category after category, searching through an endless listing of titles until you nearly gave up.
This is what some marketers call the paradox of choice: having more choices often makes our customer experience worse, not better. Barry Schwartz has spoken about this phenomenon at length for TED, arguing that more choice often creates paralysis by analysis rather than the feeling of freedom and power.
Look at your own offerings and ask yourself if 105 flavors of the same product or 37 tiers of one basic service might be too much for your customers to handle. In general, the less work you ask your customers to do, the better their experience will be. Take some of that work off their plate by taking the time to simplify your own offerings.
Test, Test, Test
Even knowing all of this, the best way to figure out what’s really going on inside your customer’s head is simply to try new things.
Internet marketers are famous for A/B testing their advertisements: for example, they might try two different advertisements, isolating a varied headline to see which one works better.
Look at your own business and ask yourself where A/B testing can be done and, more importantly, how to measure it. If worst comes to worst, you can always go back to the old way of doing things.
Talk to Them
If you haven’t already, it’s time to talk to your customers. Build a new social community. Ask for their feedback online. Invite them to email you about what they think. Gabe Newell, head of Valve, is famous for actually responding to customer emails sent directly to him. Keeping this direct line with the customers gives you an immediate pipeline into their thoughts and concerns.
You might not have to go as far as Newell. Simply take the time to get interested in your customers — who they are and what they’re looking for. Chances are, you’ll recognize some commonalities that can help you find more customers like them. That’s better for you, better for your customers, and ultimately, better for your business.
