Understanding Your Customer

Reach your consumer mind by understanding how he thinks so you can offer excellent service to your customer

By Claudio Pires
Updated on November 17, 2022
Understanding Your Customer

Great customer care involves getting to know your customers so well that you can anticipate their needs and exceed their expectations. In this article, I will describe techniques that reach your consumer mind, understanding how he thinks so that you can offer excellent service to your customer.

Once in a while, every company needs to take a closer look at the state of its marketing. Are you still sending the right message to your customer? Do you still target the same customers? And, in what way did these customers change? Here, we’ll address several things every website owner needs to ask him or herself now and then!

Reach Consumer Your Mind

Do as Amy Says

Recently, we visited Conversion Hotel, an excellent event with (yes) conversion. One of the speakers whose story we liked best was Amy Harrison. Amy talked about conversion copywriting and stated that when you lose customer focus, you’ll end up writing product-focused copy or just using best practices from your industry. That won’t make you stand out from your competitors; it won’t let you connect with your customers.

Amy talked about distinguishing yourself from your competitors. Don’t use “high quality” or “easy to use.” Amy calls these “umbrella terms,” as everyone in the industry uses these, and they don’t say anything about the product. You should focus on the gap between what you know, what you say, and what the customer thinks it means. Close that gap. Write about that to sell your product.

Understanding Customer: Closing The Gap

If you want to know what your customer is looking for in your product, there are a number of ways to find out. They all come down to one thing: ask them.

Customer Survey

Especially when you have a larger user base, you can easily send out a survey now and then. Literally ask the customer what could be improved, what they liked, and, for instance, why a product did not meet their expectations, always understanding the customer’s need.

One of the things we found when asking our site review customers about expectations and ways to improve our product is that many customers would really like regular guidance instead of just a one-time report. After some thinking and shaping, that resulted in our new service: Yoast SEO Care. In Yoast SEO Care, we touch base with customers monthly or quarterly on what needs to be improved on their website to rank better or get more traffic.

For us, this is an ongoing process. Our products come with support, and our customers like to share their expectations and feature requests. You could guide them in this by sending them a survey. That could be done every six months or, for instance, six weeks after purchasing a product. It all depends on your input needs and the variety of customers you serve.

Questions on Your Site

Reach Your Customer  Understanding  Mind
Understanding Your Customer

Another way to reach your mind and get an idea of what your consumer is looking for is, for example, an exit intent question. I deliberately say “question” (singular), as I wouldn’t bug the leaving visitor with a lengthy questionnaire. Just ask, “did you find what you were looking for, and if not: what were you looking for?” or something similar. If you’re serious about UX, you know/use Hotjar. They actually have something similar baked into their product. The description says it all:

Ask your active users and customers WHAT made them choose you and WHAT made them nearly abandon your site. Discover WHO they are and HOW to improve your site and Organization.

Note that Hotjar allows you to add a large survey, but why not limit that to one question? It’ll give you some nice, personal insights about what people are looking for on your website just by asking!

Github

Now, if you are a software development agency like we are, working in an open source environment, you probably have your code on (some platform like) Github. On that platform, you collect possible bugs and patches. In addition, it provides an excellent platform for collecting feature requests.

We encourage users to use Github and not just send us random tweets with feature requests. Feature requests on Github equal surveys on your website in the way that these are all things your user wants or expects your product to do. Sometimes feature requests can be handled quickly when a feature is already there but just not found by your customer.

Sometimes they end up on a pile of user/installation-specific feature requests – you can’t win them all. But if a feature is requested by enough users, you probably are inclined to add it as a future feature to your roadmap. These feature requests not only show what customers want, but they also teach you a lot about how they use your products.

Understanding the Customer Finally

Understanding customer needs is an important part of any business. When you know what your customers want, you can better customize almost every aspect of your business, especially your marketing strategy.

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.