Ever Wonder What it’s Like to be a Customer of Your Own Business? by Mary Cantando

If you’re like me, you critique other businesses that fall short of their product or service claims. You fume about slow websites, mazes of voicemail, products that aren’t quite what you expected.
But what about your own business?  What does it look like through the eyes of a customer?
Here’s a simple way to analyze your business from the customer’s perspective…in effect, to become a “Secret Shopper” for your own business. For real success, don’t just implement this plan once and forget it, but add it as a quarterly recurring task to your calendar.
Five Steps to Analyze Your Own Business
1.    Begin by test driving your website. How fast is it? If you sell products, how easy are they to buy? Is all your information current? If customers need the answer to a simple question, do you make them jump through hoops and complete complicated forms, or do you provide information in an easy to access format.
2.    Call your office. How easy is it to reach the person you need? Is it simple to leave a voicemail and get a callback, or do you make callers sort through a maze of directions.
3.    Review your printed materials. Are they 100% up to date? Do they merely promote you, or do they provide information that your customers need? Do they clearly explain how you help your customers to make/save money or save time?
4.    Go through the process to purchase your own product or service. How easy or hard was that? How does your purchase process compare to that of your competition? How about your price?
5.           Use your product or service. Is it A+? What kind of problems did you encounter that you had not expected?
6.    Continually improve your processes and offerings based on what you’ve learned. Then schedule another “customer visit” three months from now.

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