Knowing your customers is the secret to making your business a success. If you know your customers' desires, expectations and needs, you'll find it much easier to fulfill them. Knowing what makes the lives of your customers a little easier – or what annoys and infuriates them – can help you to tweak the way you do business in a myriad of positive ways.

Ultimately, knowing your customers well helps you to build your brand and as a result you will gain loyalty and win new customers. But how well do you really know your customers? Do you listen to the things they DON'T say, as well as the things they DO say?

The Kano model

A useful tool for identifying and categorising the parts of your service offering that deliver customer satisfaction – and the way these change over time – is the Kano model. This model differentiates satisfaction drivers into four basic types:

• Must-be qualities are those things that your customers fully expect and perhaps hardly even notice most of the time, but that would result in dissatisfaction if they were omitted. Because these attributes are taken for granted by customers, they're unlikely to be mentioned in surveys, even though they are of such fundamental importance. These are therefore also sub-categorised as unspoken needs, because the customer is unlikely to be explicit about these, they are expected.
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• One-dimensional qualities are those things promised by your product or service, which will satisfy customers if provided but dissatisfy them if omitted. This is all about identifying, shaping and meeting your customers' expectations, and ensuring they don't feel let down or misled. These are sub-categorised as spoken needs, those which the customer is likely to be quite vocal about before working with you, and if omitted, after working with you.
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• Attractive qualities don't cause dissatisfaction if not fulfilled, but they do boost satisfaction when provided. Because they are unexpected extras, they are things that customers are unlikely to mention in surveys, but they have the potential to cause the most delight and positive responses. These are also known as delight qualities, the key here is that they are unexpected and sub-categorised as unspoken wants.
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• Indifferent qualities have neither positive nor negative impacts on satisfaction. Sometimes businesses can become focused on attributes of their service they they think are important – but that their customers do not. Fundamentally, providing more of something doesn't necessarily mean an equal amount more satisfaction, it may not increase or decrease satisfaction at all. 

One important point the Kano model makes is that attributes will, over time, tend to drift from being exciting to being essential. An amazing new function on a smartphone, for example, will very soon become a standard feature on all models – to the extent that customers will simply assume that it should be provided all the time.

The mobile phone example also lends itself to another phenomenon – reverse quality. This refers to attributes that can prove both positive and negative depending on the points of view of individual customers. Some customers, for example, still prefer a basic, paper based service whilst others are looking for the very latest electronic integration and communications systems from your business.

What do you need to know?

Some of the most fundamental and important aspects that it's vital to know and understand about your customers are both their needs and the challenges they face: What are the things that annoy and frustrate your customers on a regular basis? It's important to bear in mind that what may seem a small and insignificant detail to you might be a big deal to your customers. Helping them to overcome these challenges could be easy and cost you very little, whilst the potential gains in terms of customer satisfaction and brand image could be profound.

The inconvenience of waiting in for a delivery, for example, could be overcome with timed delivery slots. Even redesigning a form, or making important information more visible, could make a huge difference to your customers' experience of your business.

Other important things to find out are exactly who your customers are, why they buy from you, how they make their decisions, what their expectations are, how affluent they are, what makes them feel good and what annoys them, along with what they already think about you and your competitors. There's a wealth of data out there that, when properly analysed, can provide you with powerful insights into how you can build your brand and improve the success of your business.

How do you find out?

This is the tricky part! As the Kano model shows, customers are not always fully aware of what their basic expectations or requirements are. They are often tempted to present you with their own ideas for solutions, rather than explaining the core of the problems they face. Getting the wrong kind of information from your customers can be costly, and may divert your attention and resources away from the most important issues.

Understanding your customers is not impossible, it just won't happen overnight. One survey or a single questionnaire won't cut it. This is something that takes time, patience and commitment. The first step is to let your customers know that you want to listen, to understand and to help. You need to demonstrate this through your actions and behaviour:

Customer visits

Meeting your customers on their turf can be an effective way of gaining useful insights into what they think of your products and brand. To maximise the effectiveness of this approach, make sure you ask open-ended questions and get customers to focus on what they perceive as the problems and challenges they face.

Staff insights

Your own team, especially your customer service staff, may have some valuable knowledge of their own. After all, they're the ones who talk to your customers, discuss their purchases and deal with their complaints. Be sure not to neglect the potential of this home-grown research group.

Surveys

Forget clipboards and paperwork – think online surveys. There are plenty of websites that enable you to quickly and easily design surveys, from a single question to as many as you can think of. Not only are they easy for your customers to complete, the data is automatically crunched and provided to you in a neat, easy-to-understand format. Some popular online survey sites are SurveyMonkey, SmartSurvey, FluidSurveys and SurveyGizmo.

It's an ongoing process

Ultimately, the best way of engaging with your customers and getting to know their needs will depend on who your customers are, and how they prefer to engage with you. Don't treat this as a one-off project - this should be an integral part of your business all the time. Think of this knowledge as an income stream; something that you build up and maintain over time. Open your mind, and show your customers you mean business.

Wondering how you capture, manage and make the most of this new information about your customers - see our article on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you'll soon see why CRM is such a central part of a successfully customer focused business.

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