Customers Lie

Ever leave a restaurant after a bad meal and have a hostess ask you how your dinner was? What did you say? Admit it, you said what everyone says. “It was fine.” Here you were being given a chance to voice your displeasure and did you take the opportunity? No. Why? Because it isn’t your job to tell a company to do better and frankly, you’re too busy to be bothered. 

So often I think companies make the mistake of actually believing their customers.They actually believe their customers are telling them the truth when asked. So at the end of the night, the restaurant manager/owner believes his/her establishment is doing a good job. Because everyone says the meal was "fine."

But in reality, "it was fine" sucks. It means at best  you've met the minimum expectations of the guest. If you ask a guest how their stay was, how their dinner was, etc., and they are anything but effusive, take an extra 10 seconds and ask them one more question.

Tell them, "That's great. I'm glad you liked everything. Might I ask you one more thing?" Unless they are uber jerks or in a real hurry, they'll say sure. Then ask, "What could we have done to make this the best meal/stay/show, etc. you've ever eaten/stayed at/seen, etc.? I mean the kind of experience you'd tell 10 friends about."

What you'll get are the areas where you fell short in their mind.

The second thing, and I think even more telling approach to use is to monitor, watch and listen to the consumer. If you're a restaurant, ask the busboys to tally unfinished entrees. At the end of the night, enter it into a spreadsheet and then track it over time. If you're a hardware store, walk your aisles. Look at your customers' faces. Do they look happy, frustrated? Do you see them fumbling to carry everything because they thought they'd just grab a thing or two but once in the store they've now decided to buy a few more items? If you're a grocery store, watch for customers who seem to be retracing the store -- going up aisles you've already seen them go up/down. Chances are they're lost or trying to find that one last item. Ask them what they're looking for. Then point out where it is. You'll help them and learn something. Keep a list of the items and look for patterns.

The bottom line, there is an entire facet of research devoted to gaining knowledge without asking direct questions -- ethnography -- and while a lot of companies can't afford to hire a professional ethnographer, you can at least be an amateur one. By employing a bit on your own, you'll be surprised how much you'll learn about what you're doing right, wrong and as in the hardware example above, where you might be able to improve or differentiate your experience/product/service in ways that delight the customer.

What have I missed? What great example of this approach have you done/seen? How do you determine if you're doing a good job or now with your customers? Let me know.

Photo credit by 'smil via Flickr