Understanding your Customers
Contents
Growing your visitor attraction
Understanding your Customers
In order to grow your business, you need to understand who your customers are and why they visit you. You may think you know this; however you need to explore all sources of feedback and ask the right questions in order to glean information upon which to base your Short/Medium and Long term plans. The key to understanding your customers and what you should be doing differently is to ask questions – of your Customers, your Employees and yourself. Be open to feedback and ask open questions to gather as much as possible to enable you to grasp ‘low hanging fruit’ and make changes for short/medium- and long-term planning for success.
Questions to ask/Items to explore:
- Who are my customers?
- Where are they coming from?
- How often do they come?
- Why do they not come more often?
- What age are they?
- What demographic do they come from?
- Are we meeting their needs?
- What do they think of the Product/s?
- What do they think of the Service?
- What do they love about us?
- What do they hate about us?
- What do they think could be improved?
It would be a useful exercise to ask the above of your employees too and see if the actual customer (guest) feedback correlates with your own perceptions and that of your Senior Management team.
Information can be gleaned from:
- Guest Satisfaction modules
- Ad hoc Surveys (Survey Monkey etc can be Free of Charge)
- Post-visit feedback (email/CRMs)
- Website feedback
- Email feedback – compliments/complaints
- Social media feedback: Trip Advisor/Instagram/Facebook/twitter etc.
Tackling issues head on
If you are open to positive and negative feedback, you can then take all the feedback head on and plan to improve your business in so many ways. Ensure you have a timeline for research and gathering information, a timeline for debate and democratic discussion, and a time for action. Clear goals, targets and Actions will come from the information gathering process, and the Actions can be split into Short, Medium and Long term plans, with clear accountabilities for your team as to who is going to do what, when – and clearly you will have already ascertained the reason why the need to change!