Define the Avatar of Your Observation Before You Start

Observing the customers starts with defining their avatar, i.e., formulating their profiles, as it helps understand the target customers. Defining the avatar eliminates the chances of assumptions and categorization of customers into different groups. Moreover, it helps identify the right people and their actions to create marketing campaigns that convert. To define the avatar of your observation, you can keep the following points in mind:

• Frequency – how many times will the customers be observed?
• Duration – for how long will the customers be observed?
• Time – when will customers be observed in a day?

It’s best to observe the customers over different time periods and on different days to gain an insight into their behavior.

Select the Location to Observe

Customers tend to divide the purchasing between multiple stores (yes, even if all of their required items are available in one store). Think of yourself; wouldn’t you buy something from the footwear brand shop even if the hypermarket has aisles filled with shoes? So, your customers do the same. Whenever they have access to the same products in different shops, they won’t stay loyal to one store. For this reason, selecting the locations to observe the customers will help identify the customers’ preferred key locations for purchasing products.

Watch the Patterns of People and Processes

The customers’ preferences and needs control their behavioral patterns. For this reason, watching the patterns of customers and overall processes helps determine their preferred products, shops, and more. While watching/observing these patterns, you might want to consider the following factors:

• Place of purchase. Most customers prefer to buy products by visiting various stores in multiple locations to compare deals and prices. So, while determining the patterns, ensure that you focus on store locations, the nature of merchandise, product availability, and identify the distributor in closer proximity.
• Product type and quantity. It is important for analyzing what your customers are more likely to purchase. For this purpose, keep track of factors like the product range, durability, availability, storage, and the customer’s buying capacity.
• Method of purchase. The customers can either walk into the store to purchase something or simply buy the product online.
• Payment method. For online purchasing, the customers have the choice to choose between credit card payments and cash-on-delivery.

Record and Communicate your Findings

After observing the relevant factors, it’s important to keep proper records and communicate the findings with relevant departments. Gathering information helps identify new ideas to improve sales and better ways of capturing the customers’ attention, which automatically translates into a higher conversion rate. To get a quick analysis of the findings, divide them under the following questions:

• What are most of the customers doing?
• What products are they buying?
• How do they purchase products?
• What are rough assumptions made by customers?
• What can we improve through this data?

Having an Unapproachable Personality 

I’ve never been big on phony smiles and standard robotic conversation. While there’s obviously a need for it (after all, consistency does help), authenticity is even more rewarding when done the right way. You can tell when a team really loves their job, respects their boss, believes in the company mission, and adheres to the organizational structure. Even on their bad days, they have a more upbeat spirit and personable personality.

However, when things aren’t right on the operations and organizational culture side, then customers come across lots of scowls, rolled eyes, frowns, and even aggression demeanors. You can bet they won’t be coming back if they can help it.

Deceptive Brand Promise

Whether you are offering accounting services, design packages, clothing items, or a speaking gig, how you deliver should align with the promise made to the customer. Those ‘what I asked for vs. what I got’ internet memes are popular for a reason. There are too many business owners signing contracts for services that they cannot adequately deliver. This is a sure way to anger customers and damage your brand.

Confusion Among Team Members or Management

Customers have lots of questions. That is the beauty of creating a solid FAQ page on your website and making a document for canned responses. When customers feel that there is inconsistency in your answers, it diminishes their trust in your business. Also, all team members should be on board with updates to the company (prices, times, locations, policies, etc.) so everyone presents the same information to curious customers.

Slow Response Times

This is easily one of the top complaints that customers have about a business. Whether they are waiting for an order or need an answer from the support team, they need to feel that their time is respected. A long wait time—especially and unnecessarily long wait time—will not only frustrate your customer but may even anger them. So, how are you managing your response time?

Hidden Policies, Costs, and Fees

As a small business owner, you should be transparent with your rates. Customers do not like assuming that a product or service is one price based on incomplete information only to find out there’s a whole other set of hidden fees. No one likes being lied to, even by omission. Not only will this turn away customers on principle, but they may even be unable to make the purchase simply because they were not given enough information beforehand so they could budget for it.

Customers are fickle by nature and, unfortunately, some take joy in being difficult or having an excuse to give a bad rating. It’s your job to be in control of the narrative of your business. Give your customers as few reasons as possible to view your business negatively. You can’t control customers, but you can operate your business with proficiency and integrity.

1. GET ORGANIZED WITH SYSTEMS:

As a business owner, juggling multiple tasks is not a secret, but inefficient handling can result in non-productivity. Consequently, it will result in unorganized systems, which create an amateur reputation. For this reason, the first trick to appear professional is to streamline your process, and you can do this by:

• Managing the office storage and space should be the first step to motivate the organization within the workspace. Organized and properly arranged office space will ensure that you are performing at the highest level. To begin with, organize the papers on your desk, switch to digital files, and it will ease business management and encourage planning.
• Ensuring the corporate campaigns are planned because it reduces time while increasing productivity. So, rather than wasting time uploading content and publishing new posts after every hour, it’s best to schedule the posts. Moreover, you can get content management tools for regular posting without wasting time.
• Storing your files in the cloud for efficient and remote access. This document/file storage method means you and your employees won’t have to spend hours looking for a file.

2. CREATE A CAPTIVATING WEBSITE 

Having a well-designed business website creates a professional appearance for your company. It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but it must reflect the business and everything your clients and customers needs to know. While designing the professional business website, consider the following points:

• The homepage of the website must be clutter-free and minimalistic. Such appearance will promise quicker scanning, hence higher conversion. For this purpose, make sure the content is spaced out by placing the necessary content on top; and visuals added to captivate the attention.
• The content must be readable (readability defines how easy it is for visitors to read through the content). The website should have higher readability to encourage seamless content scanning.
• The website must be easy to navigate as it increases search engine indexing. It’s suggested to use vertical navigation and do add business’ contact information on the footer.

3. BUILD A STRONG AND KNOWLEDGEABLE TEAM 

The business is incomplete without a unified, strong, and knowledgeable team, and it’s essential for the company’s success. It’s safe to say that team building is a crucial investment. While building your team, following the below-mentioned factors will help you find the right person, such as:

• Analyzing the job to have sufficient information about responsibilities, duties, skills, work environment, and desired outcome. As a result, the job description will be on point and helps recruit the right person (hiring the right person reduces the need for extensive on-job training).
• Prescreening the shortlisted candidates which helps determine if they are a good fit for the position. Prescreening is also a promising strategy for saving time for the selection committee and interviewing.

Having the right team on your business front will reflect that your business is skilled in handling the clients’ needs.

4. COMMUNICATE WITH TOP TIER BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

How your business communicates with the clients and customers play an essential role in determining the overall reputation. Proper communication is a must-have soft skill since it leads to effective and efficient business operations. The top-tier business communication etiquettes include:

• Creating well-defined email drafts and memos. The emails must have an appropriate subject line, and long messages are broken down into smaller paragraphs.
• Being specific while communicating, i.e., share precise details, including the desired outcomes and deadlines.
• Keeping a stack of notes in case of meetings and making points to start a proper conversation (don’t jump right in since it can be overwhelming)
• Greeting everyone and maintain eye contact.

BETTER BUSINESS BEHAVIOR WRAP UP

With a bit of planning and effort, your business can appear professional. With these few tips, you can create a professional outlook, leading to positive business operations and success. So, give them a try and let us know if they prove to be valuable!