Understand Your Target Audience to Give Better Customer Service

When it comes to providing great customer service it helps to be a mind reader. Ha! Okay, maybe we aren’t all magicians but there is an easier way to anticipate the needs of your client—creating a target audience persona. If you understand your audience, you’ll give better customer service, because you’ll know what matters to them.

If you spend some time considering who is buying or who you want to be buying from you, you might be able to identify a few of the things that are really important to them. And also what might not be as important to them!

Taking the time to consider all your audience’s characteristics, from geography to age to values and interest, will help you to meet or exceed their expectations. And there is no better way to do this than to identify your target audience and build your brand based on creating opportunities to connect with them.

How Knowing Your Audience Makes a Difference In Your Service:

A recent customer service experience I had really underscored this for me. My family had the opportunity to do a trip together to Mexico, and we spent time at a lovely resort. However, my son forgot his toothbrush. We are members of the travel club at the resort, so I mentioned this at the desk and asked if it was possible to get a toothbrush sent to our room. They said “sure!”—great customer service, right? But when we got to the room, we had received a razor instead of a toothbrush! Well, everyone makes a mistake.

I let our representative know there’d been a mistake, and I was assured we’d receive one soon. When it still didn’t arrive, I spoke to someone else who assured me she’d make a personal trip to a nearby Walmart and bring one to me. This personal touch made me feel great. Until I walked into the resort gift shop and saw they had a whole wall of toothbrushes for sale there. I was so surprised! Why hadn’t anyone let me know it was as simple as walking into the gift shop to get a toothbrush?

What would great customer service have looked like in this scenario? It was great that the resort made attempts to go above and beyond for me, but in the end what I as a mother valued above all was for my son to have a toothbrush so he could take care of his teeth. I honestly didn’t mind if I had to pay for it! While it was nice that the resort wanted to provide one for free, the added time this took to achieve meant he went quite a while without a toothbrush, and it might have been even better service to mention that toothbrushes were readily available in the resort gift shop during one of my first interactions with the staff.

If you were in the business owners’ shoes, it’s understandable that you might hesitate to mention that I could have bought a toothbrush. You might see this as an opportunity to offer me a perk. However, if you had a thorough understanding of your target customer—mothers with children—you would also consider the priority they place on making sure their children are taken care of. This might change your approach—you might consider mentioning all the options to get a toothbrush as soon as possible. You see how a solid understanding of your audience can shift your approach?

Fall in Love With Your Target Customer and Let Them Guide You

Having a target audience gives you a starting point for creating and activating a marketing plan that works. It can influence everything from the location of your business to the colours in your logo to the unique perks and benefits you promote, because you’ll understand what your customers are looking for.

The more you know about your ideal target audience the easier it will be to do this.

One of my favourite quotes about customer service is this: “Success isn’t about falling in love with your products or services – it’s about focusing entirely on showing love for your clients.” (Tony Robbins). As business owners, we can forget our number-one motivator for why we do what we do, when we get distracted by details. But why are we creating products or services? Because we know we can help people with what we do.

Need help identifying your ideal customer? Talk to us here at Fesyk Marketing and learn more about how we can help you develop your marketing strategies!