|
Meet Your
Customers More than Halfway:
Anticipate Their Circumstances of Use (Part 3)
by Adele Sommers
Imagining how
our customers might want — or need — to
use our products and services helps us create offerings
that will help them succeed in many situations and circumstances.
In Part
1 of this series, we first considered the normal
or routine conditions under which people
might want to engage with what we offer. In Part
2, we discussed why we would want to anticipate
how people might try to use our products or services
in non-routine or even extreme
situations, and the reasons for striving to make our
offerings foolproof. In Part 3 (this article),
we’ll explore another aspect of meeting our customers
more than halfway by screening their eligibility for
what we have to offer.
Non-Routine Circumstances
Revisited
Part 2 of
this series examined some of the unusual conditions
under which people might want to use our products and
services, including in:
- Risky or incomplete states, such
as during power fluctuations, using incorrect tools,
with insufficient resources or training, or with a
substandard infrastructure
 Stressful
or isolated conditions, such as during bad
weather, off-hours, or in remote locations, when it
would be hard to address customer concerns or provide
assistance if something failed
In sub-optimal
circumstances, how would your offerings react? Ideally,
your products or services would be able to complete
the action flawlessly, or, almost as ideally, halt the
action intelligently and harmlessly and let your customers
know what to do next.
Are Your Customers
Well-Suited to What You Offer?
By this time, you
may be thinking that it’s nearly impossible to
anticipate every condition your customers might experience.
So, what else can you do?
One technique is
to prescreen potential customers to determine
how likely they are to succeed with your offerings.
Using this approach, you don’t necessarily attempt
to resolve all conceivable shortcomings, but rather
reduce the risk of failure by ensuring that potential
customers will meet minimum requirements. What criteria
should you use to decide their suitability? Below are
some examples of things to consider.
Example 1 - Real
Estate
In the housing industry,
pre-qualification is common. No matter how badly a person
might want to purchase a home, if a potential borrower
doesn’t fit the financial profile of a good borrowing
risk, he or she won’t be able to get a loan —
at least not without a high interest rate. In the U.S.,
lending institutions determine eligibility for a low
interest rate using a scoring formula. The formula
takes into account many aspects of a buyer’s consumer
history, and thereby helps predict the buyer’s
future success with sticking to a long-term payment
plan.
 Example
2 - Consulting Services
If you’re a
service provider, coach, or consultant, you might use
interviews, intake forms, or both to screen potential
clients on the basis of factors such as:
- The nature of the client’s needs, and
how well those needs align with your mission, purpose,
and consulting expertise. If a potential client wants
an end result that doesn’t fall within your professional
purview, it represents a risk for both you and the
client.
- The client’s level of motivation, which
you can assess by asking what a person believes are
his or her greatest strengths, challenges, and obstacles.
Especially in the coaching arena, this type of screening
helps identify people who are inclined to blame others
or make endless excuses for their situations. Such
people might not make very satisfying clients —
regardless of how well their stated needs match your
expertise.
Example 3 - Technological
Fit
 What
if what you offer requires your customers or clients
to have a certain type of technological infrastructure
to be truly successful? That infrastructure might involve
high-end computing equipment, digital wiring, Internet
connectivity, high bandwidth, proximity to a telecommunications
transmitter, or other factors.
Many manufacturers
specify minimum technical requirements for using their
offerings. Their policies typically state which combinations
of products and infrastructures they will and will not
support. That way, their customers can prescreen themselves.
But if your offerings
involve a more sophisticated sales process, what
can you do? One of the first issues to resolve is what
types of failures customers could encounter when they
lack any part of the ideal infrastructure. Will they
falter outright, limp along with intermittent success,
or experience a problem only once in rare while?
Especially if the
potential for severe or frequent problems is
high, you could attempt to minimize the likelihood by
doing one of the following:
- Bundle supplementary products or services
with your primary offerings that are capable of bringing
substandard customer situations up to par. Such upgrades
might become a condition of sale for your primary
products or services, and would enable you to directly
set the conditions for success.
-
 Offer
a complimentary advisory service that can walk
potential customers through the steps they should
take to upgrade their technical infrastructures. In
these cases, you would not provide the upgrade products
or services themselves, but would instead point people
to where to get them. You are leaving more of the
legwork and decision-making up to those people, hoping
they’ll eventually become your qualified customers.
So, you are indirectly influencing the
conditions for success.
- Devise a screening program to filter out
all but the best-qualified customers for what you
offer. In this case, you’re not attempting directly
or indirectly to improve the conditions for success.
You are simply evaluating eligibility and choosing
your customers accordingly.
In conclusion,
consider that prescreening your customers can help you
satisfy their needs more successfully. A prescreened
customer is a better match for what you offer and thus
tends to be happier. He or she welcomes repeat business
with you; contacts customer service less often; spreads
fewer (if any) complaints about you; and gives more
glowing recommendations to family, friends, and colleagues.
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers
|
Have
you hugged your life lately? By that I mean, do you
regularly strive to transform yourself and others
through transmitting hope, inspiration, reassurance,
support, acknowledgement, optimism, and cheer?
Did
you know you are a beacon for ideas, positive energy,
and purpose that can have a powerful influence on others?
