Every market has fierce competition, especially is less prosperous times when customer spending is lower. Even on the best days, customers have more options than ever, and they know it. Sometimes just having a great idea isn’t enough. You need a competitive advantage if you want your business to thrive. There’s an old business saying that it’s much easier to keep an existing customer than to convert a new one. This is certainly true, but why not do both? If you can sand out in the eyes of your customers, you can retain your current ones and have an easier time finding new ones. These are a few ways you can do that.
Market Research
This is basically research you conduct with your intended target audience to determine the viability of your products and services. Product testing is a good example of this. This can be done for a variety of purposes from ensuring safety to measuring user satisfaction with the product. Participants could be volunteers from your current customer pool, volunteers from other sources, or you could pay for professional testers to try your products. Testing methods are generally broken into two categories.
Moderated testing: In these tests, users are observed by a moderator when interacting with products. Moderators may assign specific tasks or guide users through the process. These tests allow a real-time collection of feedback as well as the opportunity for testers to ask questions. The biggest downside is that these tests can be costly and are limited to a specific location.
Unmoderated testing: These tests are conducted with remote participants and without a moderator. Unmoderated tests are cheap and can be done in large numbers, but they don’t allow for communication between the company and testers.
Conducting this research makes it easier to make the best products possible, and it can help you with minor adjustments all the way to product launch.
Competitive Analysis
You can also go beyond researching your own products and collecting customer feedback. Performing a competitive analysis is a great way to see what your competitors are doing and how you can improve their strategies. First, you need to identify your direct competitors or those who are offering similar products or services to your own. You can research their sales strategies and results by looking into how they’re selling their products, seeing if they’re partnered with anyone, and determining how their pricing works.
You can even look through your own customer list and contact any who have mentioned your competitors to see what made your customers think of them. Conversely, you can seek feedback from your customers to find out what made them stick with you. All of this information can be used to combine your competitor’s successful strategies with your own to get the best of both worlds.
Additionally, you can research those you may be going into business with using Go Look Up. This is a database service that displays information available on the public record, including arrest reports. While none of this is meant to be used to make hiring decisions, it never hurts to have more information.
Customer Service
Offering exceptional customer service is one of the best ways to stand out from your competitors. Today’s customers have high expectations of customer support, and your customer service team has the opportunity to turn a frustrated customer into a satisfied one. With the right call center software, your call center can provide a positive experience for all involved.
Intelligent routing can automatically connect customers with the agent most qualified to address their concerns. The software also lets customers reach your agent through their preferred means, whether that’s a voice call, text, email, or another communication channel. Best of all, with true omnichannel routing they can even seamlessly switch between channels for maximum convenience. Offering top-notch customer service makes it easy to retain your customers and may even spread positive word of mouth.
