In his business blog, John Jantsch highlights 5 keys questions which firms should pose to its customers. They are as follows:On first impression, I couldn’t help but think… Wow, what a bunch of generic questions. Without giving it any thought, I couldn’t honestly understand why it’d be so beneficial to ask customers such simple questions because as a firm, shouldn’t they know those questions better than anyone?

Only after I had finished reading the blog was I able to understand the importance of switching roles in this scenario, an aspect which I personally believe wasn’t emphasized enough in Jantsch’s blog. By switching roles, I simply mean that the firm takes on the role of the listener while the customer takes on the role of the talker. In the most common scenario, it is the firm who does the “talking”, conveying and highlighting its points of difference to customers and selling its key strengths. However, by posing such questions to customers and noting down what is being said, interestingly enough, the table is being turned around and the customer takes on the role of selling the key strengths of the firm to no one else but the firm itself. Apart from receiving feedback and learning about weaknesses and what could be improved, there is something else that’s truly amazing about this process. It is that the firm is able to discover parts of its body (in business terms, its operations) which it had never before, and in other words, certain competitive advantages which had never been seen before can be acknowledged. Certain customers may appreciate a brand and choose it over its competitors for factors other than the PoD’s which the firm promotes. Firms aren’t mind readers, and therefore they aren’t able to enter and analyze each thought and opinion in a consumer’s mind. A unique way to extract the crucial information needed from customers is not by analyzing their consumption behaviors, but is by asking the right questions.

Like the saying goes, the key to any healthy relationship is C O M M U N I C A T I O N.

SOURCE:

http://experts.allbusiness.com/5-questions-ask-every-customer/17400/#.VGG7q8mM8sJ