What are examples of things you can learn from customers that you can't learn anywhere else?

If you are interested and listen, you can get the best information available about your competition from your customers, many of whom did their homework before choosing you. Get the good, bad and ugly from them, if you can. But be careful what they tell you about YOU, because it is often glossed based upon their audience (you) at worst, and at best you do not want to be reactive to comments, only proactive to trends.

Hi Caty,

I think there are two things that customers can teach vendors, because customers have the most credible, first-hand knowledge in both of these areas:

ONE:
How can we improve the customer experience that we deliver?

TWO:
How should we sell our product?

The customer is the only real expert on the experience delivered by the vendor. If you want to know where you can improve, ask the customer. They’re more sensitive to, and most affected by your experiential shortcomings than anyone, because they feel them first-hand.

Ask, and Listen carefully to the answers; ask second and third level follow-up questions until you understand the root cause of the “improvable areas.”

Product marketing people are often looked to as the “experts” that train salespeople on how to position a product as a solution to the customers’ problems. But the real experts on the value of a product are the people that experience the value of your solution, first-hand, every day – the people that parted with their precious dollars to buy it, and are therefore, more sensitive and alert to the value.

I used to work for a software company that sold inventor control and point-of-sale software to auto-parts stores. The company had a great training program for its new sales reps: Pay a customer to have a new sales rep work in different areas of their business that are impacted by the software. By doing this, the rookie reps learned first-hand how the product worked, and the value it delivered by real-world experiences, instead of in a marketing brochure or a classroom.

The “experience” of being the customer gives the customer first-hand knowledge that can be invaluable to someone that lives their lives inside the four walls of the company. Seek out that knowledge, and put it to use!

'Hope that helps!
Jim Watson

One thing you can learn from talking to customers is the gap between how they frame their world, and how you presume to frame the world: what language they are using, what keeps them up at night, what's important to them. This gap is often tremendous and holds a lot of organizations back from innovating!

If you really listen to your customers, you can learn what problems they might have, not necessarily with your product, that perhaps you can solve. Whether it is customizing your product, improvements you can make or that can lead to a new product. Chances are good that if one customer has a problem, others have the same or similar problems.

For example, you make widgets that are integral to several manufacturing customers. One day one customer mentions that it difficult to train their maintenance techs to oil the right widgets or to use the right oil. You realize that by making colored widgets or color coding them in some manner you can solve their problem. Less training is required for their techs and the equipment is properly maintained. Chances are other customers may find advantages in this new feature as well.

Helping a customer solve a problem can be a win for all concerned and helps generate customer loyalty.