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The 15 Most Common Types of Customer Needs

(and How to Solve For Them)
Allie Breschi

10-13 minutes

Companies want to stay relevant and innovative and often look at other
successful companies, hot industry trends or new shiny products for
inspiration.

However, a vital component to growth is at every businesses' fingertips

-- their customers.

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Yes, customers are the ones with the ability to determine your
business' longevity and progress.

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards
to the technology," Steve Jobs notably stated. "You cannot start with
the technology and try to figure out where you are going to sell it."

Although the importance of being a customer-centric company is not a

new concept, the right steps to achieve a customer service focus are
still hazy.

How do you understand customers' needs? What can your company

change? Do other departments need to change their goals?

Navigating this arena can be daunting and a steep learning curve if you
haven't paid close attention to customers before. So to steer you in the
right direction, here's a beginner's guide that defines customer needs,
unpacks common barriers that prevent companies from fulfilling their
customers' needs, and discloses solutions to start improving customer
service.

What Is a Customer Need?

A customer need is a motive that prompts a customer to buy a product
or service. Ultimately, the need is the driver of the customer's purchase
decision. Companies often look at the customer need as an
opportunity to resolve or contribute surplus value back to the original
motive.

An example of customer need takes place every day around 12:00 p.m.
This is when people begin to experience hunger (need) and decide to
purchase lunch. The type of food, the location of the restaurant and the
amount of time the service will take are all factors to how individuals
decide to satisfy the need.

Below are the most common types of customer needs -- most of which
work in tandem with one another to drive a purchasing decision.

15 Most Common Types of Customer Needs

Product Needs

1. Functionality

Customers need your product or service to function the way they need
in order to solve their problem or desire.

2. Price

Customers have unique budgets with which they can purchase a

product or service.

3. Convenience

Your product or service needs to be a convenient solution to the

function your customers are trying to meet.

4. Experience

The experience using your product or service needs to be easy -- or at

least clear -- so as not to create more work for your customers.

5. Design

Along the lines of experience, the product or service needs a slick

design to make it relatively easy and intuitive to use.
6. Reliability

The product or service needs to reliably function as advertised every

time the customer wants to use it.

7. Performance

The product or service needs to perform correctly so the customer can

achieve their goals.

8. Efficiency

The product or service needs to be efficient for the customer by

streamlining an otherwise time-consuming process.

9. Compatibility

The product or service needs to be compatible with other products

your customer is already using.

Service Needs

10. Empathy

When your customers get in touch with customer service, they want
empathy and understanding from the people assisting them.

11. Fairness

From pricing to terms of service to contract length, customers expect

fairness from a company.

12. Transparency

Customers expect transparency from a company they're doing

business with. Service outages, pricing changes, and things breaking
happen, and customers deserve openness from the businesses they
give money to.

13. Control

Customers need to feel like they're in control of the business

interaction from start to finish and beyond, and customer
empowerment shouldn't end with the sale. Make it easy for them to
return products, change subscriptions, adjust terms, etc.

14. Options

Customers need options when they're getting ready to make a

purchase from a company. Offer a variety of product, subscription, and
payment options to provide that freedom of choice.

15. Information

Customers need information, from the moment they start interacting

with your brand to days and months after making a purchase. Business
should invest in educational blog content, instructional knowledge
base content, and regular communication so customers have the
information they need to successfully use a product or service.

In this article, we're going to explore how to attract and sustain

customers based on meeting their inherent needs and imposing value.
For lunch, this could be a special promotion, a short wait time, or a
post-dining thank-you email. If companies can begin to make changes
before their customers' needs aren't fulfilled, this can ultimately lead to
growth, innovation, and retention.

What is a customer needs analysis?

A customer needs analysis is used in product development and
branding to provide an in-depth analysis of the customer to ensure that
the product or message offers the benefits, attributes, and features
needed to provide the customer with value.

How to Solve for Customer Needs

What stops customers from meeting their needs with your services or
products? The first step to solve a problem is to put yourself in your
customer's shoes: If you were the customer when we purchase your
goods, use your technology, or sign up for your services, what would
prevent you from achieving ultimate value?

1. Offer consistent company wide-messaging

2. Provide instructions for easy adoption
3. Ask customers for feedback
4. Nurture customer relationships
5. Solve for the right customer needs
This list includes common customer pain points and proactive steps to
develop customer-first values.

1. Offer consistent company-wide messaging.

Too often customers, get caught up in the "he said, she said" game of
being told a product can do one thing from sales and another from
support and product. Ultimately, customers become confused and are
left with the perception that the company is disorganized.

Consistent internal communications across all departments is one of

the best steps towards a customer-focused mindset. If the entire
company understands its goals, values, product, and service
capabilities, then the messages will easily translate to meet the
customer need.

To get everyone on the same page, organize sales and customer

service meetings, send out new product emails, provide robust new
employee onboarding, require quarterly trainings and seminars, or staff
host webinars to share important projects.

2. Provide instructions for easy adoption.

Customers purchase a product because they believe it will meet their

needs and solve their problem. However, adoption setup stages are not
always clear. If best practices aren't specified at the start and they
don't see value right away, it's an uphill battle to gain back their trust
and undo bad habits.

A well-thought post-purchase strategy will enable your products or

services to be usable and useful.

One way companies gain their customers' attention is providing in-

product and email walkthroughs and instructions as soon as the
customer receives a payment confirmation. This limits the confusion,
technical questions, and distractions from the immediate post-
purchase euphoria.

A customer education guide or knowledge base is essential to deliver

proper customer adoption and avoid the ‘floundering effect' when
customers are stuck. Other companies provide new customer
onboarding services, host live demos and webinars and include event
and promotions in their email signatures.
3. Ask customers for feedback.

Lean into customer complaints and suggestions and it will change the
way you operate your business. Criticism often times has negative
connotations, however, if you flip problems to opportunities you can
easily improve your business to fit the customer's needs.

Take customer suggestions seriously and act on those

recommendations to improve design, product and system glitches.
Most customer support success metrics is paramount to the customer
experience and this mentality should trickle down to every aspect of
the organization.

To keep track of this feedback, many companies track and gain their
feedback through customer satisfaction scores, customer surveys,
exploration customer interviews, social media polls, or simply a
personal email can grab helpful candid customer feedback.

4. Nurture customer relationships.

When a customer buys a product or service, they want to use it right

away and fulfill their immediate need. Whether they are delighted
within the first hour, week, or a month, it's important to constantly think
about their future needs.

Proactive relationship-building is essential to prevent customers from

losing their post-purchase excitement and ultimately churning. If
customers stop hearing from you and you don't hear from them this
can be a bad sign that their lifespan is in danger.

Companies solve for customer relationships with a combination of

customer service structure and communication strategies. Solve for
the long-term customer need and create a customer service team
dedicated to check-ins and customer retention, show appreciation with
rewards and gifts to loyal customers, host local events, highlight
employees that go above and beyond and communicate product
updates and new features.

5. Solve for the right customer needs.

Excluding customers from your cohort of business can seem

counterintuitive to solve for your customers' needs. However,
understanding whose needs you can fulfill and whose you cannot is a
major step toward solving the right problems. All customers' needs
can't be treated equally and a company must recognize which
problems they can solve and ones that aren't aligned with their vision.

To find the right customer priorities, create buyer personas and

uncover consumer trends, look at customer's long-term retention
patterns, establish a clear company vision, provide premier customer
service to valuable customers and communicate with your ideal
customer in their preferred social media space to capture questions,
comments and suggestions.

Successful startups, brick and mortar shops, and Fortune 500

companies alike all solve and prioritize customer needs to stay ahead
and establish industry trends.

How is your company solving for customer's needs? Share them with
me on Twitter.

Want more? Learn how to ask for referrals from your customers next.