(校稿任务) 第104篇 Do Businesses Know What Their Customers Want?

本帖最后由 小编D 于 2013-5-14 13:36 编辑

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Do Businesses Know What Their Customers Want？
公司真正了解他们顾客的需求吗？



Research shows 90 percent do not
研究发现多达90%的公司根本不了解。

What customers value most changes constantly, and the pace of change has increased exponentially with the economic recession.
顾客关注的焦点一直在发生不断的变化，随着转入经济萧条，这种变化速度正在成倍地加快。

One year ago people were looking at the financial stability of a company before purchasing its products, according to surveys conducted by my company, Smart Advantage. No one wants to discover that the appliance store has gone out of business when her washing machine breaks down. Now, on-time delivery outranks financial stability. So many businesses cut back their inventory during the worst of the recession that customers have found it’s difficult to get what they want on time.我们Smart Advantage公司的调查发现：一年前，人们在购买你的产品前会关注你的的财务是否稳定。因为没有人希望当她买的洗衣机出故障需要售后服务的时，卖洗衣机的这家家电卖场却已经倒闭关门了。但如今，人们对是否能准时配送的关注超过了对企业财务是否稳定的关注。因为，在如此糟糕的经济萧条期里，大部分企业都缩减了库存规模，顾客们发现你购买的产品往往不能准时到货。

Ascertaining why customers buy particular products or services from particular companies should be an essential practice for any business owner during any economic cycle, but most don’t do it. My analysis of 10 years of double-blind customer market research for more than 100 businesses revealed that 90 percent of the time, most businesses don’t know their customers’ top values. They are often shocked to learn what is at the top of the customer’s value list.
不论是处在哪个经济周期里，找到顾客为什么只会在特定的商家购买产品或服务的原因对任何一个店主来说都是一件有必要的事情。遗憾的是，大部分店主都没有去做这件事情。我10多年来涵盖100多家企业的双盲客户市场研究发现90%的时间里，大部分公司都不清楚他们顾客最关注的问题是什么。当某个时刻得知原来这点是顾客们最为关心的问题时，他们往往会大吃一惊。

Here are some tips for getting to know your customers—and potential customers—so you can deliver what they want and adjust your sales and marketing message to become more relevant.
下面是几条让你可以更多地了解你的顾客或潜在顾客，让你知道他们的需求，让你的营销和市场策略吸引到他们的小技巧。

Customers usually look for “how” things are sold, not “what”
For most products, there is any number of suppliers. If someone wants to buy a camera, a doorknob, a car, he can drive to the nearest store or order from the first company that pops up on Google. But he doesn’t. Why? Because there’s something else he values more than the product itself. It may be product durability, the company’s reputation for customer service, or safety features.
顾客们往往更关心产品是怎么卖出的，而不是它究竟是什么

对绝大多数产品来说，都有许许多多的供应商家。如果一人想去买一台相机，一个门把手或是一辆小汽车，他完全可以开车到最近的商店去购买或者到google检索排在首位的店里订购。但他不会这样去做。为什么呢？因为他除了产品本身之外还会看重一些其他的信息，这可能是产品的寿命，公司在用户心中的口碑或者产品的安全特性。

If you don’t value what you bring to your customers, they won’t value it, either. Few companies know how to effectively articulate what differentiates them from their competitors, so price often becomes the tiebreaker.
如果你不注重你给顾客带来什么样的价值，他们也就不会购买你的产品。只有很少的公司知道该如何让自己有效地从竞争对手中脱颖而出，正因为如此，大多数公司都只把赌注压在了价格上。

Existing and prospective customers have different values
The research analysis at my company shows that 70 percent of the time, customers and prospective customers differ in what they most value. When that’s the case, your message to your customers should be different than your message to prospects. Very few companies make this distinction in sales and marketing messaging. Existing customers may have come to depend on your top-notch help desk; it’s what they’ve grown to value most about your company. Prospective customers haven’t used your help desk, so they don’t know how essential this benefit is.
现有顾客和潜在顾客关注的焦点是不同的

我公司的研究分析发现70%的时间里，现有的顾客最关注的问题和潜在的顾客是不同的。既然是这样的话，我们就应该向现有顾客和潜在顾客各传递不同内容的消息。实际中几乎没有公司的营销和市场策略作了这种区分。对现有的顾客来说，他们会更可能地依赖你们公司先进的帮助平台，你去宣扬这一点可以最好地提升公司在现有顾客中的形象。潜在的顾客因为还没有使用过你们的帮助平台，他们不会了解到这是多么的必要。
Use what you learn
If you find customers value speedy responses the most when they have a problem, and your customer service department is slow, then fix customer service. Make sure to tell the customer service employees that customers have rated fast response time as their top priority.
根据情况快速行动
当顾客们有问题时你会发现他们最注重你是否能够做到快速反应。倘若你售后服务部行动迟缓，你需要对此进行整顿。你得告诉售后服务部雇员我们的顾客现在第一位关心的是我们能否快速采取行动。

When you’ve got stats you can brag about—brag away. For example: “Since implementing the new procedures, 98 percent of customer calls are returned within 30 minutes; 2 percent within one hour.” Now you’ve used that information in two valuable ways: to make your company more relevant to customers, and to let customers know you’ve got what they want.
当你做到了这一点，你可以拿出你的数据进行宣传。例如说，自从我们贯彻了全新的处理方式后，98%的顾客投诉我们在30分钟内就能得到解决。其余的2%我们在一个小时内也会解决掉。这样一来你就把这一信息用在了两个有价值的方面：让你的公司更贴近顾客和让顾客知道你们可以满足他们的需求。

Invest in disciplined customer research
Research data collection costs have gone down 30 to 35 percent during the past few years and is now affordable for smaller companies. Double-blind customer market research is the gold standard and well worth the expense, but it’s not feasible for all companies. However, even a small investment in research can reap huge returns. Some less expensive and free alternatives to find out what your customers want include sharing the expense with an industry association; partnering with an organization that needs the same information or a peer that doesn’t compete with you; hiring a college intern; or creating an online survey using a free basic service, such as Survey Monkey.
花些钱做严谨的顾客研究
研究和数据收集成本在过去几年里下降了30%～35%，小规模的公司也可以支付得起了。双盲客户市场研究是非常有效的一种方法，值得去为此花费，但它并不是所有的公司都适用。然而，即便是一笔小额投资的研究也能带来巨大的回报。通过和你同行业的商家共同承担费用，和同样需要这一数据信息的组织或者和你没有竞争关系的同行合作，聘请一个大学实习生或者用免费的basic语言开发一个类似Survey Monkey的在线调查，你就可以花费很少的钱甚至不用任何花费就了解到顾客的真正需求是什么。


来自http://www.qualitydigest.com