7 Not-So-Obvious Insights into Customer Psychology Sure to Help You Grow Your Business
I’ve come to the conclusion that the greatest threat to a self-service laundry’s growth – and perhaps even its survival – in our modern, high-tech and significantly diversified world is to take a myopic view of your customers. By that, I simply mean not understanding your customers from strictly their point of view.
Today’s customers have more power than ever before, thanks to their ability to leverage social media, the ease of conducting online comparison shopping, and the great proliferation of choices available to them. Hence, store owners have to work harder to understand them and what motivates them to patronize a specific laundry business.
As a result, I thought I’d focus this month’s column strictly on the individual psychology of the customer. Grasping the following seven insights will prevent you from making the bombastic mistakes that originate from not understanding your clientele on an emotional and psychological level.
1. Customers Don’t Want to Work Hard
It’s certainly not that they are lazy. They just don’t want to struggle to do business with you by overcoming the obstacles you have perhaps unknowingly placed in their path.
They definitely don’t want to have to park too far away, especially on rainy or snowy days. Nor do they want to deal with an argumentative attendant. Also, they have no interest in being physically uncomfortable, because your store has no air conditioning in the summer or lacks proper heating in the winter. Examples of laundromats making customers “work harder than they should”are numerous. I’m sure you get the point.
2. Customers Listen to the Exact Same Radio Station
Yep, they sure do. That station is WII-FM and the call letters stand for “What’s In It For Me?”Try not to be insulted, but quite frankly, customers are not concerned with your well-being; rightfully so, they are essentially concerned with theirs. So, your job is to look after them and totally satisfy their needs as they define them, not how you define them.
Perhaps design a survey sheet for your customers to fill out. The headline on this survey should ask, “What Do You Expect From Your Self-Service Laundry?”The responses you receive should give you a good start toward discovering what your customers want. Design the survey with a series of specific questions about your business, and be sure to leave extra space where customers can address any issues or concerns about which you may have neglected to ask.
3. Customers Understand the ‘Broken Window Theory’
The “Broken Window Theory”was championed by a gentleman named William Bratton, while he was police commissioner of New York City. He was a brilliant criminologist and, at different times, also served as the police commissioner in Boston and Los Angeles.
His theory goes as follows: if the police make a big issue of trying to prevent small crimes – such as public intoxication, vandalism and breaking windows – by doing so, that will reduce the number of more serious crimes. This will help create an atmosphere of civil behavior, which has an impact on potential lawbreakers.
What this means is that appearance matters to your customers. A malfunctioning door on a restroom, ceiling tiles stained by water, floor tiles that are missing and, yes, a broken window will stick out like a sore thumb – and label your laundry business as full of imperfections, which customers find to be insulting.
Never overlook small imperfections in your laundry. They are by no means small in the eyes of your customers, who believe these smaller issues will lead to larger, more unacceptable problems.
4. Customers Don’t Know What They Want Until You Tell Them
The late Steve Jobs was a brilliantly creative guy. He had the ability to visit the future and then come back and tell us what he saw. And what he saw were the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
Of course, these morphed into many related items, making Mr. Jobs and his company’s stockholders very wealthy. No of us knew we needed an iPhone with all of its amazing apps and features until he told us we did.
The same approach can be used at your store. Get creative and visualize products and services that other laundry owners in your market haven’t even considered offering – then present them to your customers and watch what happens.
I’m not saying this will be easy. Jobs never found it to be easy. It simply takes vision and the fortitude to follow through, no matter what the obstacles or the (to be expected) negative “that’ll never work”comments you will undoubtedly receive from other less-creative and/or envious people.
It could be a faster drop-off service, an amazingly efficient pickup-and-delivery innovation, a creative new way in which you price your machines, or an ingenious series of loyalty programs. Whatever it may be, there is always something out there “in the future”that you can visit and then return to tell your customers about. And, hopefully, they’ll decide they need it – just as we all need our smartphones today.
5. Customers Know How to Spell
Most of your customers – like any large, diversified group of people – are not likely to win any spelling contests. However, all of them can spell the word “business.” They all understand that the letter “U”(meaning them) comes before the letter “I”(meaning you).
In other words, they fully expect to come before you, with regard to products, services and the overall comfort of your vended laundry. Therefore, if you think it’s financially wise to keep your heat set low in the winter and your air conditioning set high in the summer, think again. This applies to every aspect of your laundry business.
6. Customers Are Looking for Trouble
People are people, and when they enter your laundry for the first time, it’s highly likely they will spot negative things mighty quickly. These could take the form of rude attendants, offensive odors or just a general sense that the facility is below par.
Believe me, customers will spot any lurking trouble and, if they do, they likely won’t return to your store. Pareidolia is the brain’s natural ability to form shapes from random objects; for example, seeing animals within cloud patterns. This psychological phenomenon also kicks in when finding negatives within a laundromat and lumping them together to form an impression.
Don’t give customers any reason to “pareidolia-ize”the negative aspects of your laundry business.
7. Customers Have Hearing Issues
Research has demonstrated time after time that communication is controlled by the receiver, not by the sender. In reality, it’s not what you say but what people hear that really matters. Yes, they hear you – but they interpret what you, your attendants and your in-store signage says in their own personal manner. And this fact can cause serious issues.
This is especially significant when dealing with different cultural groups. For example, in some cultures, it is deemed offensive to point directly toward something (such as a washer) to indicate its specific location, rather than using a wave of the hand.
When talking to customers, it’s extremely important that no misunderstanding occur due to language differences, hearing issues, messages to be passed on, etc.
There is an amusing example of miscommunication that supposedly occurred during World War II. It goes like this: Lieutenant A., in charge of one end of the British line, told the private in front of him to pass the word along down the line of soldiers to Lieutenant B. The message was: “We are going to advance. Can you send us reinforcements?”Unfortunately, when Lieutenant B. finally received the message, it came across as: “We are going to a dance. Can you lend us three and four pence?”
I will end with this… the Japanese are known to be very empathetic and welcoming toward customers. Their word for it is “Omotenashi,” which essentially translates to putting yourself second to your guests (customers or clients) in the business world without appearing servile. If you understand and speak only one word of the Japanese language, I suggest “Omotenashi”be the one.
