When Did You Last Look at Your Business Like a Customer?

There’s a phrase I use on my website:

You can’t read the label from inside the jar.

When you spend every day running a business, you naturally see it from the inside.

You know why things are done the way they are. You know which member of staff handles which problem. You know what your products and services do. You know how customers are supposed to contact you.

And that’s precisely the problem.

Because your customers don’t know any of that.

They only see what’s in front of them.

Try being your own customer

Imagine you’ve never heard of your business.

You search for the product or service you provide and your company appears alongside several competitors.

What happens next?

Is it immediately obvious what you do?

Is there a compelling reason to choose you?

Can you quickly find the information you need?

Does the website work properly on a phone or tablet?

Are the prices, opening times and contact details accurate?

Can you easily make an enquiry, request a quote or book?

And what happens if you look at the reviews?

What complaints appear repeatedly? More importantly, has anybody from the business responded to them?

These things can seem relatively insignificant when you're busy running a company.

To a potential customer, they can be the entire experience.

The customer journey starts earlier than you think

Businesses often think about customer service as something that happens after somebody becomes a customer.

It starts much earlier.

A Google search is part of your customer service.

Your website is part of your customer service.

How quickly you answer an enquiry is part of your customer service.

Your social media is part of your customer service.

Even the information that isn't available can influence someone's decision.

And every unnecessary bit of friction gives a potential customer another opportunity to go somewhere else.

They probably won't tell you why.

They'll simply disappear.

Familiarity hides problems

There's another difficulty.

When something has been a particular way for long enough, we stop noticing it.

That clunky process you've used for six years? It's just how you do things.

The service that hardly anyone buys? It's always been on the website.

The enquiry form that produces very few enquiries? Perhaps customers simply aren't interested.

The customer question your team answers ten times every week? Nobody has thought about why customers can't find the answer themselves.

Individually, these things may be small.

Collectively, they can represent lost sales, wasted time and unnecessary cost.

And because they're familiar, they become almost invisible.

Don't just look for what's wrong

Looking at your business through your customer's eyes isn't simply an exercise in finding faults.

It's also about finding opportunities.

Perhaps customers regularly buy one service but don't realise you offer another.

Perhaps people visit your website for information you could turn into useful content.

Maybe customers love one particular aspect of what you do, but you barely mention it in your marketing.

Perhaps there's an obvious partnership with another local business that neither of you has considered.

Or maybe you've got a fantastic product or service that simply isn't being explained particularly well.

Sometimes the opportunity isn't to do something completely new.

It's to get more from what you've already got.

Step outside the jar

Set aside an hour and experience your business as though you'd never encountered it before.

Google yourself.

Visit your website on your phone.

Read your reviews.

Look at your competitors.

Try making an enquiry.

Look at your social media.

Ask yourself why you would choose your business rather than the alternatives.

Better still, ask somebody who isn't involved in the business to do it.

Then ask them one question:

What did you notice?

You might be surprised by the answer.

Because sometimes the biggest opportunities in a business aren't particularly well hidden.

They're simply difficult to see when you're standing on the inside.

What might you be missing?

The Dragon Forge Business Diagnostic takes around five minutes and looks across the key areas of your business to help identify potential gaps, weaknesses and opportunities.

If you've got the feeling that something could be working better but can't quite put your finger on what it is, it's a useful place to start.