Do you understand the needs of your customers?

The success of your business depends on understanding and meeting the needs of your customers. But how do you go about doing that? It shouldn’t be that difficult – but companies consistently manage to make it harder than it should be. Recent news has reminded me that large companies can make big mistakes by not understanding what their customers need, expect, or want to do.

A recent example from the news is Facebook. They released Facebook Home for Android users. The object was to bring a Facebook-centric user experience to smartphone users. So far, Home has failed miserably. Why?

The consensus among the tech press is that Facebook developers and testers are iPhone users. Facebook hands out free iPhones to their teams. You can get an Android phone if you request one but the default is everyone who doesn’t specifically ask gets an iPhone. The Facebook developers and testers of Home only used Android phones for testing but continued to use iPhones as their main communication device.

The problem was that many Android phone users have customized Widgets and Facebook Home replaced them with its own screen. The number of downloads from the Google Play store is much less than expected and the user ratings are poor. Facebook employees didn’t realize that Widgets were a big deal to Android users because iOS doesn’t have Widgets. If some developers and testers had been avid Android users they probably wouldn’t have made that mistake.

New product development isn’t the only area where companies fail to understand customer needs.

As a consulting firm, we learned this lesson early on. We learned that listening to just the manager or owner isn’t sufficient to understand how to help their business flourish. Often they’re focused on a symptom of a problem, rather than the cause. And often they haven’t listened  to their own employees to know where real issues are lurking, or even how lousy systems – rather than poor work habits – are what makes it difficult for them to get  work done.

One way we bridge the gap is to meet with different groups in the company – marketing, sales, managers to see what each group is concerned about. And now, sometimes, we observe their processes in order to discover where the real opportunities for improvement are. Does this approach work for price-sensitive customers? No. But it also helped us understand we have to pick the right customers, and those that put price ahead of value are not part of our tribe.

Some of our competitors treat their clients generically, treating all customers as if price is the only thing that matters. The results can be unhappy clients – and new business opportunities for us. Even the customer looking for the lowest possible price is rarely happy with the scaled back services that go along with it.

The point isn’t to brag about how great we are. The point is that it takes experience, effort, and understanding to get it right- we can’t simply assume.

I have no magic formula that will improve your ability to meet the needs of your customers. But here are some things to think about:

• Don’t assume you understand the needs of your customers.
• Don’t assume all of your customers have the same needs.
• Listen to what your customers want but also think about what your customers do. They may have unfulfilled needs you can meet that they’ve never thought of expressing. They may express wants which don’t really meet their true needs.

Not every prospect is a potential customer, and it’s important to understand that as well. As an Android user, I’m frustrated when a cool new app isn’t available for my device. But unlike the Facebook development team, some businesses realize that it’s better to do a thing well rather than piss off a bunch of people by getting it wrong.