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How do you stay in touch with ever-changing customer demands? - first published March 12, 2024

Some companies value and execute on Customer Experience effectively, constantly listening to their customers and evolving. Others want to but struggle to prioritise CX initiatives that work for their business and market. Both agree that customer needs are ever-changing and what worked before in serving their customers can get outdated over time. To stay relevant, companies need to keep a finger on the pulse of the market and ever-changing customer demands. Here are two things I learned recently during discussions with customers on their markets.

Firstly, try and learn something new about your customers regularly. It’s hard to admit that you have customer blind spots. While 5-star reviews are amazing, more than 50% of customers don’t want to share a bad experience. Capturing just a fraction of constructive feedback can help stay in touch with changing demands. Ask yourself, when was the last time we learned something new and valuable about our customers? Where might we look for blind spots that we are unaware of? Usually the answer to that is straightforward; your customers will tell you, but you need to ask and in the right way. There are many options to do this under typical CX frameworks including; customer surveys, customer journey mapping, customer advisory boards, Voice-of-the-Customer programs, strategic account planning, and social monitoring. Ask your trusted advisors which might be the best fit for you.

Secondly, try and learn something new about your market regularly. Market forces are constantly changing, whether economic, technical, political or consumer trends. When working with startups/scaleups I often share a strategy plan template https://lnkd.in/eN2ccTMu to provide a framework for prioritising actions aligned with strategy. I used it for my own business, combining the best bits of strategy planning models, fundraising pitch decks and business plan documents. The same principles still apply to those more established companies later in their journey. Taking a minute to step back and think about the market environment helps put back on your strategy glasses. Try it, going back to basics and asking some of these questions, might just identify an area to explore for a customer or market blind spot. Once you find it, you can fix it, but you also need to make listening to customers and continuously learning new things about them part of your DNA.