5 Cheap & Easy Ways to Listen to Your Customers

I have been repeatedly asked over the past 6 months by CEOs, marketers, and small business owners "with the crummy economy, how should I market my product, should I cut prices?". My first response is always, "what are your customers telling you?" More often than not, I usually get that blank dogs watching tv look and then told they don't have the money or time for market research. My second response is typically, "listening is cheap & easy, guessing at what your customer wants is expensive".

The fundamental building block for marketing is getting close to the customer. Listening to the customer - understanding not only who and what they are, but more importantly, how they make decisions, what is important to them, what are their wants, hopes, dreams and fears. Listen and they will tell you. These aspects are constantly evolving because the customer, the marketplace and the competition are constantly evolving. You need to consistently be listening to your customer or you are just guessing. Guessing about your customer is throwing money at the problem because of something you heard from a buddy or read in the paper and hoping it works. Hope is not a strategy.

5 Cheap & Easy Ways to Listen to Your Customer

1. Listen in on customer care calls.
This should be part of every executive's job. John Smale, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble was famous for having a tape cassette made of customer calls that he would listen to each morning as he drove to work. At a minimum everyone in marketing should spend at least an hour a month sitting in on customer care calls and listening. As important as listening in on the call, you also get to talk to customer care agents. They are on the front line with the customers and are a wealth of information and insight.

2. Call Your Customers.
Literally, pick up the phone and call a customer. Introduce yourself, thank them for their business and ask if they are happy with the company. You can pick any sub- group of customers - best customers, worst customers, new customers, customers who have not purchased/used your product or service in the last 6 months, etc. You can call them to thank them for their business, to ask why they do/don't like the product, ask how you can make the experience better, etc. The important thing is listening to the customer and helping to create a relationship. You get points just for making the call. Again, this should be a small, regular activity - talk to 5 customers a week - and not some big, drawn out market research project.

3. Conduct An Online Survey
With email and online survey tools such as Survey Monkey and Zoomerang, there is no excuse not to be sending out regular surveys to your customer base. Again, pick sub groups of your customer base. You do not want to be sending out weekly surveys to your entire customer base. Keep track of who you are sending the surveys to so that you are not sending a survey to a customer more than once every six months as a rule of thumb. Keep the survey short - 5-7 questions - with multiple choice answers.

4. Google Your Company or Product
It sounds ridiculously simple. It is and it is amazing how few marketers, CEO and small business owners to it. Regularly googling your own company or product will give you a feel for who is following you, what web sites and blogs are writing opinions about your company. Better yet, set up Google Alerts. Some of hits are one-off rants or raves. That's fine. What you are looking for is a trend or pattern of comments over time.

5. Conduct a Net Promoter Score Survey
I am a big fan of Net Promoter Score (NPS) as easy and simple way to begin to understand and track customer loyalty. Basically, you ask a single question, "how likely are you to recommend (your company/product/service) to a friend or colleague? on a scale of 0 to 10. How to calculate your NPS and use the number are at the above link. I have always added a 2nd question, " would you be willing to talk to a manager with the company?" After the survey is conducted, either online or over the phone, the marketing department and senior executives call those people who said they would be willing to talk to a manager and they ask the customers why they would or would not recommend the company. It is a very powerful way to learn what the customer thinks and feels about your company and why.

These are all cheap and easy ways to start listening to your customer. None of it requires a lot of time or money. It does require some discipline to do one of these on a weekly basis along with all of the urgent matters on your plate. But it is these cheap and easy acts of listening that become key elements in organically growing loyal and profitable customers over time.