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Tips for Uncovering
“Customer Hassles”
by Adele Sommers
Are you wrestling
with cranky customers, low-vitality products, congested
services, and an aching bottom line? You certainly don’t
need to. Why exactly does this occur?
One major reason
is that consumers expect products and services to work
exactly as advertised, in a confusion- and
error-free manner. It's easy to understand why
these expectations exist because we ourselves are consumers.
If given a choice between something that's easy to use
and functions correctly, and something that’s not
easy to use or doesn't function correctly, we'll pick
the former every time.
 When
consumers aren't happy with the quality of their
experiences, what will they do? Unless it's a catastrophic
situation, will they contact you to tell you about it,
so that you'll know how to correct the problem?
Perhaps some will,
to vent their frustrations about what they’ve been
experiencing. But research shows that the vast majority
will quietly take their business elsewhere, and
you might not ever hear why.
To help you put
a stop to the silent exodus, this article suggests four
ways to uncover the causes of “customer
hassles.”
First, Why Do
Customer Hassles Occur?
You'd think that
any company that provides a product or service would
put itself in the shoes of its own customers, and thus
provide the very best product or service possible. Unfortunately,
that's not always the case, especially if there is not
much competition in a certain market. Yet even when
product and service providers have the very best
of intentions, here's another pervasive problem...
Any products (such
as tools, gadgets, or software systems) — or even
services (such as auto repair shops, telephone companies,
or transportation businesses) — can burden consumers
by introducing complex requirements of their own.
Those requirements
can include queuing time, waiting time, installing or
upgrading something, setting things up, programming
in some cases (think about your VCR), learning curves,
maintenance, wrestling with bugs, troubleshooting, waiting
on hold for customer support, and potentially much,
much more.
 These
are all examples of customer headaches of various
sizes. When these extra requirements begin adding up,
no matter how “good” your product or service
might be, hassles can negatively affect your customers’
experiences with your offerings. These are just a few
characteristics:
- Hassles can range from something that seems relatively
small and only mildly annoying all the way
to making the product or service impossible to
use for its intended purpose. They can drive customers
crazy, or make them feel really angry or stupid.
- In the worst cases, customer headaches can cause
catastrophic ripple effects that affect wider
and wider circles of people, circumstances, and/or
operations.
- No bargain-basement pricing can ever compensate
for the worst hassles!
What’s
the Antidote?
In contrast, what
would you want to see happen? You’d
want to have headache-free offerings that attract loyal
customers, right? Good! There's every
reason why you would want that.
Customer retention
research shows that once companies have loyal customers,
the cost of keeping them is just one-fifth the cost
of attracting new ones. Research also shows that companies
can boost their bottom-line results up to 100% just
from increasing customer loyalty by only 5%!
So to attract loyal
customers, we certainly must remove headaches, and we
should strive to create consistently pleasant experiences
with all interactions customers have. The interactions
can include visiting a Web site or storefront, asking
for more information, purchasing something, receiving
order shipments, interacting with the products or services
themselves, using any training and documentation, contacting
customer service, and so on.
Note that an unpleasant
experience anywhere along the way could
destroy a customer’s positive perceptions of all
other interactions!
 Tips
for Uncovering Customer Headaches
So, let’s discuss
how you can reveal the sources of your customers’
aggravations. Below are four tips for exposing this
critical information:
1. Poll customers
using Web, mail, or e-mail surveys, or support calls.
You might ask what
your customers love and don't love about your products
and services, and how they might suggest improving them.
You could even consider expanding routine customer support
calls by asking customers: “Is there anything you
can think of that could enable our products or services
to better assist you?” Customers may find it very
refreshing to finally reveal their pet peeves.
2. Comb your
technical support logs to locate hassles of every type.
What’s really
been bugging your customers or stopping them from getting
something done? See which kinds of trends you can spot.
For example, are people calling technical support mainly
to get training on using the system? Are they having
problems installing, setting up, or getting going? Are
they reporting bugs? Are the instructions incomplete
or confusing? Another way of looking at this is to ask
why your system is not completely transparent
in helping customers to accomplish their real goals.
3. Observe your
customers using your products at their own facilities.
It may be a real
eye-opener to watch your customers try to install, set
up, learn, and troubleshoot your product without having
someone guide them through every step. If you had intended
your products to be self-explaining and easy to use,
this could reveal several aspects in which they are
not.
4. Prioritize
your findings using the 80:20 rule.
Try to determine
which 20% of the hassles (the “vital few”)
seem to be giving your customers 80% of the grief. Then,
continuously work toward eliminating the heaviest hitters
until you've removed everything down to the noise level.
It’s easier said than done, but in the long run,
your customers will really appreciate it!
In conclusion,
revealing and remedying annoying hassles can stem
the exodus of cranky customers and help you begin building
a base of “raving fans.” Your customers deserve
no less than the very best of experiences with every
facet of your offerings.
Copyright 2006 Adele Sommers
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I
got a telephone call recently and I knew I had to
put everything aside. I felt the universe tapping
me on the shoulder, urging me to pay extra close attention
because this conversation was sure to be extraordinary.
I was anticipating the kind of discussion that occurs
on top of a mountain, not in an office.
When
you look in the mirror, do you see an “expert”?
If not, why not?
