Have your customer’s needs and preferences changed...for good?

For many organizations, the effects of Covid19 on their customers would be hard to overstate.  The scale, impact, and length of the pandemic places it in some rare company among historical crises.  These kinds of events require tremendous human fortitude coupled with a lot of improvising on the part of providers of products and services.  All the while, customers are re-prioritizing needs and reassessing what is truly important to them.

This creates the perfect storm for innovation as providers and suppliers seek new ways to respond to those changing needs and interests.  And underneath it all, customer Key Quality Characteristics (KQCs), that short, rank-ordered list of qualities that is the basis for selecting one provider over another, has changed, at least in part.  And, it and will probably not return to what it used to be.

What do your customers value most?  Your unique value proposition must be based on a current understanding of those Key Quality Characteristics.  If it isn’t, you will be trying to earn your customer’s trust and loyalty while focusing on the wrong things.  Furthermore, your most commonly deployed listening post, surveys, may no longer be asking the right questions.

It may be time to deploy another listening post that is perfectly designed to probe KQCs with your customers: focus groups.  Structured interviews can also help.  Both can inform an update of your current satisfaction survey(s), where you would then be asking the right questions and gaining valuable feedback on new emerging needs and interests.

If you want help understanding how these, and other, Listening Posts can work together and give you fresh insight into your customer’s KQCs, I have a Listening Post Guide that provides more details.

Beyond your immediate customers.   If you think it might be time to update your customer knowledge, it may also be an opportune time to go further and reassess community need in general.  Many health and human service organizations now conduct periodic Community Needs Assessments (CNA).  Yours may be among them.  These assessments combine fresh customer feedback with other community / market information including demographics, socioeconomic factors, regulatory and legislative changes, and an inventory of relevant resources. In addition to customer expectations, what else has changed in your marketplace?  In most communities, Covid19 has also brought about changes in funding, regulations, competition, potential partners, and demographics, to name a few.  A Community Needs Assessment provides a more comprehensive understanding of current needs and priorities, and how they may have changed as a result of Covid19 and other events or issues.

If you would like some help preparing a new CNA, or just some ideas on how to improve on previous efforts, I have a White Paper on CNAs that may be helpful.

This is one of those critical times of change, for your customers, and your community or market.  Understanding what has changed is the first step in preparing to respond in ways that will be valued the most.  Call me if I can help.

Jeff