Understanding

Customer Needs
By: Paul Jykyll Rosete Bauzon
Christian Avila
Elton John Ducusin
Understanding customers is the key to
giving them good service. To give good
customer care you must deliver what you
promise. But great customer care involves
getting to know your customers so well
that you can anticipate their needs and
exceed their expectations.
To understand your customers well, you
need to be attentive to them whenever
you are in contact with them. The
potential rewards are great: you can
increase customer loyalty and bring in
new business through positive word-of-
mouth recommendation.
There are three main ways to understand
your customers better.

Put yourself in your customers'

shoes
Using data to understand your
customers
Ask your customers what they think
Understanding your customers requires you to put
yourself in their shoes take a hard look at the points at
which your customers have contact with your business.
These include meetings and visits, phone calls,
correspondence and deliveries. Do your premises look
scruffy, is your receptionist unfriendly or do your
phones ring and ring without being answered? All of
these things can make a customer feel disappointed.

The most common customer complaint is being kept

waiting. If you're slow to return calls or fulfill orders,
then you're in danger of losing customers. Above all,
customers want you to deliver what you have promised
and surpass their expectations.

*Put yourself in your customers' shoes

As a small business, you can offer a
personal service. If you remember a
customer's name and recall your last
conversation with them, you will have
brightened up their day. They will also tell
their friends what a great service you
provide.
Understanding your customers and
improving your service must be a priority
throughout your business. Everyone from
the front desk to the delivery staff should
focus on exceeding customer expectations.
Your database or customer relationship management
system (CRM) holds valuable information about your
customers that will help you understand their needs.
Investigate the data you hold on your customers, it can
tell you a lot. Look for patterns so you can see when your
customers typically make orders. You can also use the
data to analyze your performance. Check how quickly
you're responding to orders or delivering goods.
CRM systems are more sophisticated than simple mailing
lists. Because they hold information about customer
behavior and preferences they can improve customer
satisfaction and retention. They can help you to identify
customer needs more effectively, allowing you to up-sell
and cross-sell, increasing profitability.

*Using data to understand your customers

Conduct a customer satisfaction survey and you will make
your customers feel valued. You will also gain valuable
insights. But don't ask for feedback if you're not prepared
to make changes. When you do make improvements, tell
your customers what you have done as a result of their
feedback.
Well-compiled customer surveys can tell you things you may
not know, including human factors such as staff behavior.
Not everyone complains when they are dissatisfied. Instead,
they tell their friends about their bad experience and take
their business elsewhere. Unless you proactively consult your
customers, you may never discover if you are going wrong.
As well as asking for feedback, set up a customer contact
programmed to ensure you keep in touch with your clients. A
good customer contact strategy will allow you to listen to
your customers and tell them more about what you offer.

*Ask your customers what they think

When it comes to measuring the quality of your
services, it helps to understand the concepts of
goods and services dimensions. Users may want a
key board that is durable and flexible for using on
the wireless carts. Customers may want a service
desk assistant who is empathetic and resourceful
when reporting issues.
Quality is multidimensional. Goods and services
quality are comprised of a number of dimensions
which determine how customer requirements are
achieved. Therefore it is essential that you
consider all the dimension that may be important
to your customers.

*Quality Dimensions of Goods and

Services
Physical dimension - A product's
physical dimension measures the
tangible product itself and includes
such things as length, weight, and
temperature.

Performance dimension - A
product's performance dimension
measures how well a product works
and includes such things as speed and
capacity.

*Goods quality has two dimensions.

Responsiveness - Responsiveness refers to the
reaction time of the service.
Assurance - Assurance refers to the level of
certainty a customer has regarding the quality of the
service provided.
Tangibles - Tangibles refers to a service's look or
feel.
Empathy - Empathy is when a service employee
shows that she understands and sympathizes with the
customer's situation. The greater the level of this
understanding, the better. Some situations require
more empathy than others.
Reliability - Reliability refers to the dependability of
the service providers and their ability to keep their
promises.
*Service quality has several dimensions.
The Kano model is a theory for
product development and customer
satisfaction developed in the 1980s
by Professor Noriaki Kano, which
classifies customer preferences into
three types and five categories.

*The Kano Model of Customer

Requirements
Dissatisfiers or
Basic Needs
– Expected features or
characteristics of a product or
service (legible forms, correctly
spelled name, basic functionality).
These needs are typically
“unspoken.” If these needs are not
fulfilled, the customer will be
extremely dissatisfied.

The Kano model starts from three types of customer needs:

Satisfiers or Performance
Needs – Standard
characteristics that increase or
decrease satisfaction by their
degree (cost/price, ease of use,
speed). These needs are
typically “spoken.”
Delighters or Excitement
Needs – Unexpected features or
characteristics that impress
customers and earn the
company “extra credit.” These
needs also are typically
“unspoken.”
• Must Be (Expected Quality)- Requirement
that can dissatisfy (expected, but cannot
increase satisfaction)
• One-Dimensional (Desired Quality)- The
more of these requirements that are met, the
more a client is satisfied
• Delighters (Excited Quality)- If the
requirement is absent, it does not cause
dissatisfaction, but it will delight clients if
present.
• Indifferent- Client is indifferent to whether
the feature is present or not.
• Reverse- Feature actually causes
dissatisfaction.
Five Categories
Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a research
method that's used by businesses to
describe the needs and requirements of
their customers. This process captures
everything that customers are saying about
a business, product, or service and
packages those ideas into an overall
perspective of the brand. Companies use
VoC to visualize the gap between customer
expectations and their actual experience
with the business.
Gathering the Voice of the
Customer
Customer Interviews- Customer interviews are
one of the traditional techniques to collect VoC
data. It is commonly used to understand particular
customer point-of-view regarding product or
service issues, attributes, and performance
measures. You can choose to perform this for
either a particular customer or for a group of
customers with some common attributes. Usually
executed in person, on the phone, or through
email.
On-Site Customer Surveys- Another great way
to capture VoC is by conducting on-site customer
surveys. These surveys help you in understanding
your customers and addressing the issues they
face.
Live Chat- According to a study, 44% of
online shoppers feel the best feature an
ecommerce website can have is a live chat.
Having an on-site chat is an incredible
method of collecting real-time customer
feedback and reducing the possibility of
your customers feeling unsatisfied.
Social Media- Social media is a potent
ingredient of the feedback cocktail, as it
provides you the opportunity to have a two-
way communication with your customers.
Website Behavior- Your website is a great place for
you to capture the voice of customer data. Besides
chat and on-site surveys, another way to collect this
data is by analyzing your customer behavior on the
website.
Recorded Call Data- If you're planning to leverage
historical data, recorded call data might come in
handy. Recorded calls with your customers can give
you a broad overview of how they perceive your
brand, what sort of objections do they have, and
what else do they expect from the brand.
Online Customer Reviews- Your online reputation
isn't just the result of what you generate at your end
— it includes all instances in which your business
appears online, including online reviews.
Off-site Surveys- Opting for an off-site
survey is yet another method to capture the
Voice of Customer. Although this may not
be a popular method for large business
setups, it's leveraged by lots of medium-
sized businesses when conducting customer
research.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)- is a
management tool that is used to measure
the loyalty of a company's customers. NPS
gives you quick and reliable feedback from
customers. The way the system works is
easy. Customers need to answer this simple
question on a scale of 0–10.
Focus Groups- This is where a group of eight to 12
customers meet in a room, where they are asked to
share their perceptions, beliefs, and opinions about
your product or service. The group participants are
free to openly talk with one another.
Emails- This method can be as informal or as
formal as you want it to be. You can send highly
personalized emails to particular customers or
create a template that can be used for the entire
target.
Dedicated Feedback Form- The last option is to
have a dedicated feedback form on your website —
and this is really more of a mandate than an option.
No matter which other methods you plan to choose
to capture VoC, you cannot skip having an on-site
feedback form.
 The concept of Voice of the Visitor / Customer data
analysis was originally developed by the promoters of
Total Quality Management (TQM) back in early 1990s.
VOC measurement involves analyzing qualitative data
obtained from the customer’s through various methods
such as feedback forms, questionnaires, surveys and
polls and using this data to optimize product/services
and marketing campaigns.
Voice of Visitor approach piggybacks on the VOC
concept but goes a step further by promoting analysis
of the web visitor qualitative data. Complaints and low
ratings are also considered to be the Voice of the Visitor
and this data can be used by the companies to changes
to their services and/or their product line.

Analyzing Voice of the Customer Data

Start with the question- An effective VoC
analytics program is focused on answering
questions. So, before you analyze anything,
clearly identify the question (or questions) you
want to answer.
Gather and prepare data- Above all, the data
you collect should be suited to your question.
Choose the right tools- If you need to compare
complex trends over time, a barebones survey
analysis tool won’t be able to tell you enough.
Likewise, if your goal is to use insights drawn
from social media comments as proxy for
customer survey responses, you need a flexible
platform that offers rich reporting and
customizability.
Analyze your data- In data analytics for
Voice of Customer, the reports you
generate should be focused on answering
your question.

Draw conclusions- Some insights will be

self-evident.

Take action to improve customer

experiences- Sometimes, your best
course of action will be clear.
One of the tools for process analysis.
Statistical thinking relates processes
and statistics, and is based on the
following principles:
All work occurs in a system of
interconnected processes.
Variation exists in all processes
Understanding and reducing variation
are keys to success.

Variation and Statistical thinking

Thank You 