Identifying and meeting customer needs is an avenue for every business to gain an advantage over its competitors.

In highly competitive markets, it’s easy to lose customers to your competition so, the big question is: How Can I Identify Customer Needs?

To understand customer needs and wants, you need to know who your customers are, understand customer psychology and identify customer expectations.

Who Are Your Customers?

Your customers are the individuals and businesses that purchase goods and services from you. They can vary by industry, job, gender, religion, etc. Knowing who your customers are and where they come from plays a vital role in identifying and meeting customer needs.

For example, if you’re a florist, you can expect that in February, there will be a higher demand for your products because of Valentine’s Day.

What are Customer Needs?

Customer needs are the factors that make them purchase your product or service (customer psychology) and the product or service itself.

From the example above, understanding customers’ needs and wants becomes easy when you know who your customers are.

How to Identify Customer Expectations

In identifying and meeting customer needs, you must also identify customer expectations.

Customer needs lead to the expectations they have when interacting with your company. Going back to the example of the florist, you can anticipate that in February, customers expect an abundance of flowers because of Valentine’s Day.

However, it isn’t always easy or accurate to rely on head knowledge and assumptions when trying to identify customer expectations. Try out the following tips:

• Keyword Research

Keyword research helps you identify customer needs. When looking for a product or service, the first-place customers usually look is the internet. You can use Google suggestions, Quora, Reddit or even the ‘people also ask’ section on Google to identify your customers’ expectations.

• Observe Market Trends

Google trends is an easy way to observe market trends in the digital space. You get to see and understand customers’ needs and wants and can act accordingly to fulfil their expectations and needs.

• Look into Your Competitors

Another way to keep an eye out for your customers’ needs and expectations is by looking into what your competitors are doing. Chances are they know something you don’t and they can help you stay up to date.

How to Meet Their Needs

Now that you’ve successfully identified your customers’ expectations, you’ve also identified their needs (the factors that make them purchase your product or service and the product or service, itself) The next step is to satisfy these needs:

• Create Awareness

Creating awareness by launching campaigns and placing new advertisements is an effective marketing strategy to inform your customers about your ‘new’ product. A bonus is to make these campaigns localized to your customers and you can do this by collaborating with iVoiceAfrica.

To understand more about localization, check out: Understanding SEO and Localization for Startups

• Request for Feedback

After you’ve successfully created awareness with iVoiceAfrica, you’re guaranteed to get customers. But to keep them, you need to have a better understanding of your customers’ needs and wants.

So, have opinion polls on their preferences and what they’d like to see. Also, create sections on your website that enable feedback to aid in identifying and meeting customer needs.

Importance of Understanding Customer Needs and Wants

The importance of understanding customer needs and wants has its advantages. Customer-centric organizations, for example, are 60 percent more lucrative than non-customer-centric businesses. Here are a few more advantages:

• It keeps you ahead of your competitors
• Shows that your business is reliable and efficient
• It helps you build a loyal and sustainable customer base
• It keeps you in business
• It helps you align your products and services to your customer

You can always reach out to iVoiceAfrica to create awareness and localize your products and services to your target audience. Contact us by calling +234 (0) 7026276411 or sending an email to info@ivoiceafrica.com