To Make an Impact, Solve Your Customers’ Problems
"Brand loyalty" isn’t a nebulous concept. It’s the deep personal perception that a company just gets it.
Put another way, their loyalty comes from the feeling that the product or service just gets them. Understanding the real problems your customers are facing day-to-day isn’t a marketing exercise, it’s an all-hands-on-deck question that needs answered everyday.
Even when it's difficult to plan for the future (amidst our current volatility, for example), you can make an impact with customers by showing them how well you understand what they need.
Take teachers, for example, and the endless challenges they’ve faced in the past two years. When lockdowns first began, they became front line tech support for kids and their parents struggling to adopt new technologies. When counties began to allow students return to the classroom, teachers were required to balance their attention between in-person students and those remaining at home. In both circumstances, teachers were handed new problems that didn’t fit into their roles and responsibilities (from my personal experience, they did a remarkable job).
What would it have looked like if companies like Zoom, Microsoft & Google tapped into their surplus margins and became front line support for teachers, parents and students having tech issues during lockdown?
Instead, these organizations mostly carried on, focusing on their products and the infrastructure required to support the influx of new customers. They could have built a lifetime of loyal customers by focusing talent and resources on creative solutions to these problems. Instead, most of us cringe at the very mention of their name (sorry Zoom).
You can make an impact each and every day by listening to and addressing the real problems your customers are facing. Accomplishing this requires ongoing and continuous communication between your leadership and your frontline customer support. This person could be anywhere in your company - it could be your sales team, your service techs, or your receptionist. Check with everyone that has an touchpoint with your customer.
Challenging your team to actively listen and empathize to discover these problems can be difficult, but the pulse of your organization doesn’t come from your people, it comes from your customers.
You got this! Thanks for reading,
Nick Kline.
Here’s how you can take action today:
Ask your team to keep track of the questions, complaints, or situations from your customers.
Make a habit to collect these daily, and have your leadership or marketing team review them at least on a monthly basis.
Hear something unexpected? Follow up with a call/email to learn more. Ask deeper questions to learn more about their environment, daily worries, or expectations.
On a monthly or quarterly basis, create customer surveys to discover if these sentiments are shared by others.
Take action! Implement what you’ve learned and anticipate the needs of your customers by solving their problems before they happen. This is the secret sauce to your company that only someone with your knowledge can do (or, you can hire a strategic marketing firm like us to help!)