Understanding How Your Customers Think

We often believe that we understand exactly how our customers think and why they choose to do business with us, but then something unexpected happens and we realise that we have misread a customer completely. This is why it is important to constantly try to enhance your capability of understanding how your customers think.


Today, many successful companies devote a lot of energy to customer relations and use valuable input form their customers to make their business even more successful. Every tiny bit of input can be useful. If you get a hateful mail or phone call from a customer, do not simply shrug it off and file it under “nutcase”. Try to understand why the customer contacted you and if there is anything that you can learn from his or her reaction. Keep in mind that even widely inaccurate claims such as “you should get to my house and fix my computer, it’s your duty” might have an interesting aspect. Perhaps there are customers out there that would actually be willing to pay for having a technician come to their house and fix their computer for them instead of having to rely on phone support? Or perhaps customers would purchase computers from you instead of from your competitors if you could promise them this type of service?

One way of understanding how your customers think is naturally by asking them. The hard thing is of course to make customers willing to answer your questions, and to answer them truthfully. These are just a few examples of factors that you should bear in mind when you analyze customer input.

· What a customer think he wants, and what he actually wants can be two different things. If you want to run a successful business, you must be able to give your customers what they actually want in the shopping situation, not what they think they want when they answer a set of questions. A customer may for instance believe that the most important thing for him when buying a car is fuel economy, but when he is faced with an actual purchasing decision he will go for a fast car that looks good, despite how many gallons of gas it will gulp down.


· What a customer claims to put emphasis on may not be the same factors as he or she actually uses to make purchasing decisions. When faced with a set of questions, it is of course tempting claim that “ethical production” and “environmentally friendly” are really important aspects when purchasing goods and services, but will the customer really care about this if it turns out that “ethical” products are much more expensive?
· Some people find it really hard to deliver criticism. Even if they hated your service and decided never to buy anything from you again, they may still cross the “I’m really satisfied with your service” alternative if faced with an evaluation form.

One of the things that you should keep in mind is that even though you are running a business, you are also a customer practically every day. Instead of focusing on your particular commerce, think about all the situations where you are the customer. What do you think is important? How and why do you answer evaluation forms? How do you make purchasing decisions? What can really annoy you? How do you want a company to react when you have questions or deliver criticism? What would make you call a company and complain? By realising that you are in fact a customer too, it will be much easier for you to understand how your customers think.