Who is a customer?
A customer refers to a business or an individual who purchases the goods or services of another company. Customers are valuable because they push revenues, and there is nothing to offer by businesses without them. Most public-oriented businesses compete with others to attract customers either by aggressively advertising their products or by dropping prices to expand their customer bases.
Some businesses carefully monitor their customer relationships to identify ways to improve service and products. It is done to understand how to meet the needs of its customers better, how businesses treat their customers to provide a competitive edge. Even though consumers can be customers, consumers are defined as those who consume market goods and services for end-use.
Customers Decoded
Businesses often honour the saying "the customer is always right" because happy customers often award repeated business to companies meeting or exceeding their needs. Therefore, many companies carefully observe their customer relationships to invite feedback on ways to improve product lines. Customers are categorised in many directions. Mostly, customers can be either external or internal to an organisation.
External customers are disconnected from business operations and are usually the parties interested in purchasing the finished goods and services produced by a company. Internal customers are individuals or businesses closely associated with business operations, typically present as employees or other functional groups within the company.
Businesses often study their customers' profiles to streamline their marketing approaches and customise their inventory to attract most customers.
Customers are mostly grouped according to their demographics, such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, geographic location, and income level. All these may assist businesses to cultivate a snap of the "ideal customer" or "customer persona." This learning helps companies deepen present customer relationships and reach out to untapped consumer populations to increase traffic.
Various colleges and universities offer consumer behaviour courses devoted to studying their behavioural patterns, choices, and characteristics. They centre on why people buy and use goods and services and how it affects companies and economies.
Understanding customers allows businesses to create effective marketing and advertising campaigns, deliver products and services that address necessities and wants, and preserve customers for repeat business.
Customer service strives to ensure positive experiences and is key to a successful seller/customer dynamic. Loyalty in the form of favourable online reviews, referrals, and future business can be lost or won based on a good or bad customer service experience.
Recently, customer service has developed to include real-time interactions via instant message chats, and other means of communication. The market is satisfied with businesses offering the same or like products and services. What differentiates one from another is customer service, which has become the basis of competition for most businesses is a critical element of Sigma Six.
Recent Customer Trends
Due to development in technology, the concept of competitive advantage in business has been marked with a high degree of dynamism. In this monopolistic competitive market, every company is having almost the same technology. It has generated a school of standardised products with a difference on only one front, i.e. the brand name, which can attract people very quickly.
It has resulted in the concept of luring maximum customers by becoming more innovative. How much receptive a company can grow to their needs and aspirations? All these have forced the companies to register their presence at every nook and corner. They take the help of the latest technology in this endeavour. One such technology is "Online shopping".
