Why is Customer Perception Important and ways to improve it?

Customer perception is nothing about the customer’s opinion, thoughts, feelings about the company’s product or services. /in more simple words referred as what does customer exactly feel about your brand through direct or indirect experiences they’ve had earlier with your company. The entire process of customer perception occurs when a customer sees or hears about a particular product. Always remember everything which you do in your company will directly affect the customer’s perception. From the way the products are lined up in the retail store to the discounts you offer on your products. For instance, the meesho app predominantly attracts women than men because the app is in pink color, and men feel alienated about pink color. The customer perception is based on the colors used in the logo. If a product is trying to attract both men and women then, using only pink color might not seem like a good idea. You can take customer perception as the marketing concept which tells directly what does the customer think about your product. It can be positive or negative feelings or the customers’ expectations or experiences. If you understand the concept of the customer’s perception, and act upon it, then no one can stop you from being successful brand.

4 Stages of Customer Perception

There are 4 stages of customer perception that shows clearly how does the customer define your brand. Each individual interprets different about a product. The stages of customer perception are;

1.Exposure:

Exposure is nothing but the colors, logo, ambience, sound, which a customer experiences when they come in contact with a brand or a product. When a customer gets attracted to some product because of its uniqueness, and gets their attention. The customer steps into the second stage.

2. Attention:

The customer starts giving attention to the product when they start liking it after the exposure gets over. they start noticing the product being marketed and if it results positive, the customer turns out to be in the third stage.

3. Interpretation:

In this stage the customer interprets some meaning to the overall experience with the product. The customer will have some opinion about your brand after experiencing the first 2 stages, and if the experience is positive, the customer steps into the final stage.

4. Retention:

In the final stage, the customer sees a particular brand with whatever they have got experienced in the earlier stages. They now have a clear picture about your brand. The perception can be positive and negative as well.

Importance of Customer Perception

• The customer perception is important because it affects everything:

Customer perception plays a vital role from understanding the customer. Their buying decisions, loyalty on the brand, recommending the brand to their loved ones, everything depends on the customer’s perception.

A search reports shows that around 60% of people will give attention to the brand’s message, if they’ve been trusting the brand for a longer time. To increase the revenue, you have to make sure that their perception is positive for your product.

• Customer perception enriches the Brand Value:

A customer perception is developed on several levels. Emotional expectations from the company keeps on growing as the time passes by. Your brand should engage the customers to develop fun. A good reputation might get others to try a product, but they will continue to buy the product only when they trust your brand.

Trust is an important element of the customer to access the brand. That makes the decision to the customers to buy big purchases.

• Most of the Business Opportunities are generated from Customer Experience:

We very well know that the Brand Loyalty has become one of the valuable assets a company can ever own. Marketers invest more and more in offering the customers what they want. As this triggers their emotional benefits and build a good customer perception through positive shopping experiences. Thus, creating more business opportunities.

Ways to Improve Customer Perception

• Create an emotional relationship with customer:

It is said that the most effective way to maximize the customer value is to move beyond customer satisfaction and create an emotional relationship with them. How can you create emotional relationship with the customers? Know the needs of the consumers and speak to them on a regular basis. By this way you can even know the reason behind if they are leaving your product.

• Always Go for the Positive Language:

Whenever you’re interacting with the customers always go for the positive language. Every customer services does, what is new in that? Every customer service suppresses their emotions and speak in a positive way, but that doesn’t work. That will not lead to customer satisfaction.

Positive emotions have the power to open up. The expression of the natural positive emotions is well received by the other party and has the higher chance to contribute to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

• Commit to Consistency:

Consistency is the key. To have a positive customer perception, you should see that the sales happening is getting delivered to your customer in the promised time, because this reflects how your customer view your product. To achieve consistency, you should focus on the customer needs as that is connected to your brand interactions.

• Fill Skill Gaps Before They Become Evident:

These skills approach to service and customer relationship comes through proper training and continuous learning. To maximize your competitive advantage, you should know the skills which your company should develop it, and invest in the software and training to bridge the skills gap.

The bar of customer expectations is rising. So, you should make sure you fulfill all the expectations of the customer in order to survive in the market. Now that you have learnt about the customer perception, it’s importance to develop and what can be done to improve them. Try these in your business and come out with beautiful colors.