“Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only these two- basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are 'costs.'"

-Peter Drucker

“The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer; all profits come from that. Customer satisfaction is the only measure of business success in the long term.”

-Brian Tracy

Customer satisfaction – that’s what it’s all about.

Let’s put it into perspective. What if you were to take all the “customer” catch phrases and make them priority on how you run your business?

What if the everything you did from now on was based on: customer demographics, customer satisfaction and customer relationships (customer retention, customer loyalty, customer intimacy and customer engagement).

Here’s some things to consider:

Customer Demographics – Bottom line. You need to know who you sell to and who wants your product or service. You also need to re-assess this if your product changes, market demand changes, and the world that buys your product changes. If you sell skateboards  you need to know what tweens and teens are doing right now – what they are watching, playing, saying – you can’t just use the same marketing strategy that worked for teens in the 70s or 80s.

Customer Satisfaction – Everything you do in your business should be done to satisfy the customer – or at least your best customers. A satisfied customer comes back and they bring their friends. So how do you monitor satisfaction? Make it easy for customers to give you their feedback: online surveys, suggestion boxes and focus groups – consider it quality control and consider it essential.

Customer Relationships – All of these count:

1. Customer Retention – Lots of customers is good, lots of repeat customers is better. Customers come back because they had a good experience the first time. They liked a particular product, they got a good deal, they felt good when they left. Make it worth their while to come back – points programs, frequent buyer deals and weekly specials because customer retention leads to…
2. Customer Loyalty – That’s going beyond retention. Customer loyalty is when your competition opens up next door and has a half price sale and your customers still come to you. Why? Because they get consistently good value, good service and good quality.
3. Customer Intimacy – This is beyond demographics, this is knowing the customer’s name, remembering that they collect antique salt and pepper shakers and that they come to your store every March for their tomato plants. How does a business owner with seven store locations pull this off? He doesn’t, but he has an excellent sales team that does.
4. Customer Engagement - Two questions for every customer: Did it work? What could’ve made it better? Give customers every opportunity to feel in control of their experience and to share their ideas with you. You never know what they can come up with and, if they feel part of the process, you can bet they’ll be loyal.

It all boils down to that age old adage, “The customer always comes first!”

If you think you could polish up on some of your customer strategies – if you aren’t sure where you should focus your efforts to achieve the ultimate customer experience, call a FocalPoint Business Coaching Professional – we can help you fine tune your customer strategies.