ND e-commerceCarl Arrowsmith

Session 6Identifying and meeting customer needs

Last Time

• Ways to boost customer/company confidence, ISIS, comments, feedback, about page etc.

• Site Downtime

• Devised your own company

Session Objectives• How to identify customer needs

• Meeting / Delivering customer needs

Customers needs• Customers have requirements, if those

requirements are not fulfilled they will use another company

• A great range of requirements, e.g. – Site design– Confidence– Service / Standards– Products– Trading Terms

e-commerce needs• Work in groups as owners of your

virtual businesses, devise a list of things that consumers may need from an online company. With regards to:

• Site Design• Products• Confidence• Service & Standards• Trading Terms

Ways to identify needs• Thinking of needs as a business is all well and

good but how can you identifying specific customer needs ?

• Questionnaires– On web or sent to current/potential clients

• Customer Profiling– Use data collected from site survey, products

purchased• Discussion/meeting with clients• Looking at competitors• Devise a questionnaire that your company

could use to evaluate customer needs

Meeting Needs• Development of products• Change/add services• Customisation

– Personalises services, e.g. Amazon will change content (products and offers) according to past purchases

• Implement other ideas given by customers

• Not all needs can be met, due to cost or available resources

Delivering needs• Analyse your questionnaire: • Write down things that your company

can implement to meet customer needs shown by your questionnaire

• Have your companies prospects improved by asking customers their requirements ?

Effects of meeting needs• Customer acquisition

• Customer retention

• Additional Purchases

Boosting Profits• Cost of acquiring online customers is 20

to 30 % greater than traditional outlets• Start-up companies may remain

unprofitable for 2-3 years due to costs.• By retaining 5% more customers, profits

can be boosted 25-95% (Reicheld & Schefter 2000)

Covered today• How to identify customer needs

• Meeting / Delivering customer needs

Next Time - Group Presentations