Three Important Questions

The other day I received a call from a friend. The guy was once one of my customers when I worked in my previous company. I advised him after I had left there, yet we didn’t have any business due to quite different line I was engaged in now. It was two years ago. The boy was several years younger than me and was having some trouble recently. He left his company last month because he offended one of their key customers, and he was actually dimissed by his boss. I really felt sorry for him. I thought it was really not something that should’ve happened to a guy at his age, though. To us, customers are always right and we have to serve them well. I think of the following three questions I read in a book: 1) What is our business? 2) Where are our customers? 3) What value can we provide to our customers? Simple questions as they are, it is very difficult to implement them in reality. However, they are so important that we must always keep them in mind. That may be the reason why the writer of the book requests the readers to repeat these three questions every day before they start their work. It is essential that you know about your business, then you will be clear about your goal, and everything you do will be set around it. What’s more, you must know everything about your customers so that you can always offer best service to them, so you must know where they are and who they really are. Last but not the least, if you hope to maintain a long-term relationship with a customer, you need to have “something” that the customers may be interested. We call it “value”. If your customer thinks you are the only option or at least you can save some money for them, then you will make it. The customer will always follow you. Hope he will get over it and start his new career soon. I can also draw some lessons from him.