Validate your 2012 goals and help come up with them by finding out what your customers think. These questions will help guide you to executing on the right priorities regardless of the hard widget you're selling. <br><br>
1.
This is the famous NPS question. How likely are you to refer us to a friend or family member on a scale of 1(not likely) to 10 (highly likely)?
-- This question tells me how I'm doing and ultimately lets me know if my services to the customer are ok. Because these customers purchased, this question gives me a feel for the service after the purchase including getting the product to the customer in a reasonable period of time, handling issues with a strong customer focus and measuring if the customers were happy with the product.
2.
What prompted you to purchase the (product name here or general category)? Fill in with a selection of answers to choose from plus an other with open box feedback. Answers should be developed from your key product experts in house that know the basic reasons for making a purchase.
-- This is a big one for marketing. You need to drive messanging on the site and in your traffic generators (adwords, seo, affiliate banners, emails, etc.) by yanking on the right customer triggers. Also you need to have sections on your site that speak to these core triggers. I've found several sites that have not taken the time to do this because driving pages this way is different from basic product categorization. For example, some customers want a hammock that is perfect for a hot and humid climate and will hang on trees yet the hammock categories are rope, nicaraguan, mayan, etc. There is a mis-alignment and thus there's a chance of losing the customer.
3.
What drove you to purchase with us today? Generally you're developing multiple choice answers like Price, Selection, Promotion, FREE Shipping, as well 1-2 industry specific answers and an Other with open box feedback.
-- This is a major opportunity to understand where your strengths and weaknesses are as a company and how they align with your vision. If you don't want to be the lowest price player but people buy from you because of price, there are usually two reasons: A. Customers cannot figure out how to shop items any other way than price (usually bad because they are buying the lowest price in that category or close to it) and B. You are the lowest so your vision was not achieved. Figure out what's best for your company and your customer or the customers you truly want. Usually a further anaylysis of competitive prices as well as LTV on different customer buyers (cheapos, middle of the road and high end buyers) is needed to further understand this metric.
4.
How often do you purchase our products? Weekly, Monthly, Every couple months, Couple times a year, One time, Other and open box feedback.
-- Perfect way guidance (butted up against real data) to build post transaction emails in a timely manner. You have to start somewhere on the timing so don't over analyze, execute on a starting point and test from there. Usually after transaction emails take time to develop results so 3-6 months per timing is perfect. If you have a large enough audience (you need to attempt at least 100 orders in X timeframe to make a statistically valid result), you can break up the audience and test timing. Don't test too close (like 30 versusu 35 days) because it likely won't matter.
5.
What is the best promotion we can offer you for your next purchase? FREE Shipping, % or $ Discount, Cheap Expedited Shipping, BOGO, Volume Discounts, Other and open box feedback.
-- Perfect opportunity for not only post transaction bouncebacks (product flyers, emails, etc.) but also a testing ground for onsite offers, affiliate coupons, etc. These are usually top offers that you want to integrate into a post email offer provided after the items have shipped (usually 5-10 days post the order). A lot of times FREE Shipping will become #1 and prove a need to evaluate Total Gross Margins (All Revenues minus Product/Shipping COGS) to figure out if it produces a higher Total Gross Margin $ in the end.
6.
We are considering expanding into these other categories because we believe we can bring greater satisfaction to our customers but we'd like to get your feedback on these categories. Please take a look at each category and rate it from 1 (not likely to purchase) to 5 (highly like to purchase).
You would list each product or category to gauge interest. Product expansions are very popular right now and add almost immediate value especially if you add from existing supplier relationships or drop ship partners. It's a major opportunity for small businesses who've already developed a strong enough and efficient process of their core product purchases right now.
-- This is one of my favorite questions from the standpoint that it addresses growth rather than keeping the business humming along. You can ask the question on products, categories, or anything else that is in your true growth strategy. Remember new categories can also feed and service the old categories as much as old categories do the same for new categories. Bundling or Product Packaging is a very effective means of becoming unique and increasing Average Order Sizes by giving customers a value of a package that they can't refuse. This question can help you find new categories that will allow you to do this beyond the packaging you can achieve with what you have today.
Ask these questions to a new group of customers each quarter and develop a quarter over quarter comparison. Let this information sit beside the P&L, supplier feedback, internal feedback, and expert feedback to find commonalities. Those common threads will create a short list of 3-5 tactics to follow in each quarter.
As always, I'm available at heartlandgirl21 on yahoo mail. Reach out anytime.
Jennifer DiMotta