Customer Needs

• 1. Customers Needs - Products

  2. Customers Needs - Services

Here is a brief look at 16 common customer needs when it comes to products and services. While these may not represent all needs or address specific cases, this is a great beginning point towards understanding our buying habits and the end-users we wish to attract to our business.

Vocab

• • End-users

  • Revenue

  • Price-anchoring

  • Loyalty program

  • Market rate

  • Service

  • Product

  • Price

  • Differentiate

The Four Crucial Needs of Customers

When it comes to customers buying a product (end-users), there are four crucial areas that people often consider whether they realize it or not. Some may value one of the four more than others, while some may use one of the four areas as a reason for why they continue to shop at one business over another.

• • Fair price

  • Good service

  • Good product

  • Feel valued

Fair price

Pricing should be important to you for revenue, but also it’s important to your customers. They need the pricing to be fair.

When deciding if your price is fair, you could benefit from looking at your competitors so you can gauge the customer expectations. While we agree that price anchoring is not always the smartest way to decide on pricing, it’s important to know where you stand in comparison with your competition.

If you are charging significantly more than your competition then think seriously about whether your offering is better than theirs.

It’s okay to charge more, however, compensate that with better customer service, like a loyalty program or bonus features to justify the higher price point.

The key thing with pricing is to be transparent. Whether you’re above or below the market rate, let your customers know why this is the case and exactly what they get for their money.

We will go further into depth about how to establish a Price in our next module.

Good Service

Good customer service has been proven time and time again to allow business’ to charge more.

Customers continually suggest they would be happy paying more for a product if it meant it would improve the level of customer service. So you need to think how to meet customer expectations.

Having a strong customer support team increases the level of trust your customers have for you. They understand problems will be addressed and fixed in a timely manner and they’re more receptive to when things do end up going wrong.

Good customer service, however, is not an excuse to increase your prices. If you can keep your products affordable and provide excellent customer service, even better.

We will cover more about this topic below and in our Customer Service module.

Good Product

Creating a solid product is obviously a major need for the consumer, and a major need for you too. There is no point in excessive manufacture costs if no one is buying your poor product.

Be confident in your product, be open to improvement suggestions and always aim to give the customer exactly what they need, not what you think they need. Below we will break down various needs associated with a good product and service.

Additionally, we will cover how to match what customer's wants and how to find customers in our next modules: Product and Customer Segments.

Meet customer expectations

How much your customers feel valued by your company is often overlooked. Some companies seem to forget that without your customers, you would have no business. Customer value is the one need we think most businesses overlook.

We will cover how we create value for our customers through our modules in Customer Relationships and Value Proposition.

Think About It: Crucial Needs at Work (Write down or print your responses)

• • Rank the four crucial needs of consumers based upon your level of importance.

  • For each need, think about a positive experience.

  • For each need, think about a negative experience.

Breaking Down Product Needs vs. Service Needs

Now that we have learned about the four crucial needs of customers, we will break them down into 16 individual needs that can be separated by the service we provide and the actual product.

While these may not represent all needs, this should give us a better idea of how we differentiate our product/service from competition and to meet our end users specific needs.

It is not important to remember all of the needs below, however it is important to understand that all end users are not the same. More importantly, the messages we convey through marketing or while in person need to be catered to our end users. When in doubt, remember the four crucial needs and start from there.

Product Needs

Service Needs

Think about it: Product and Service Needs (Write down or print your responses)

• • Rank the nine (9) customer product needs in order of importance to you when it comes to buying/purchasing clothes, shoes, watches, bags, or other item.

  • Rank the seven (7) customer service needs in order of importance to you when it comes to buying/purchasing clothes, shoes, watches, bags, or other item.

• • https://loyaltylion.com/blog/the-four-needs-of-a-consumer

  • https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-needs