The most important element in the business is the customer base

[Alexandoy]

A neighbor who has a big parcel of land in the rural area had planted papaya for a crop. His intention is to sell the farm produce in our residential village. That is fine because our middle class village has more than 2,000 families. When the harvest time came they sold the papaya in front of their house. They also did some promotion by calling on the neighbors that might buy. I thought all along that the business was doing good until I got to talk to that neighbor.

Of the thousands of residents in our village only just a handful bought their product. A lot of fruits got spoiled which caused a great loss. After another week of harvest he decided to stop bringing the fruits to our village. The farm is more than 50 kilometers away so that is also a big expense to transport the farm harvest. He was disgusted and felt that his product was boycotted by the neighbors. I told him that papaya is not a universal fruit and to be honest there are only a few people I know who eat papaya (and that is a fact). Oh well, he is going to try to sell his farm produce in the nearby village. Let us wait and see.

 

[eldavis]

Customers plays a very vital and important role in your business, after all they are the final consumers, without them the chain of distribution cannot be completed and you a business owner cannot make profit. This is why customer relationship is very important. How you treat your customers would determine if they would want to return another time. Companies with poor customer service usually and easily loose customers once a little competition comes up.

 

[Jasz]

In business, you are judged by your customers. The better they are, the more potential referrals you will receive and the less of your time you will have to spend on sales. Customers who are ready to make a purchase or always appreciative of your products and services will certainly give your company a good reputation among others.

Customers can elevate or bring your business down based on the recommendations they make. If you please a customer today, there is a tendency you get 10 more customers through them. But if you have issues with one, there is a tendency you lose 50 customers through them.

You should know what your customers want. From the packaging to the advert, to the way you welcome them to your business, your packaging etc. You should treat every customer very well and learn to settle every issue amicably. Obviously , you can't patronise yourself, you should have tolerance, though you should have rules and regulations, policies binding your business so you don't take every shit a cheat throws at you.

Lastly Always ask your customers opinions on how they want your product to look like from the opinions you should know what to add and subtract.

 

[Deleted member 28127]

Some companies aren't good because they add feedback sections but what they do is delete negative feedback and ban users posting this feedback not search for the reasons of not being satisfied and correct them.

 

[Kingsley]

There no doubt about it that what keeps a business going is the customer base because if a business organization begins to lose their customer based that will certainly translate to decline in terms of sales volume which also translate to decline in profit margin of the business organizations. Hence every business settings should hold on strong to their customer base.

A good management team should make their customer base as one of their priority in the sense that they should endeavour to manage the needs of their customers by meeting the demands of their customers whick keeps changing from time to time.

There is a saying that goes thus that customers are always right although this might not be true in the real sense of it but what that statement really means is that we should make customer's satisfaction our watch word as a good entrepreneur or manager.

When the customers are satisfied this will make them come back for more of the product or services and this again help them to have confidence in ones product and bring about new customers because the old ones will do the job of referring new customers and they will stand to testify of their experience with the business organization.

 

[Deleted member 28127]

Sometimes the lose of the customer base is there is another company not paying VAT or working with illegal way is selling less amount of money than you as the VAT are most of times decreasing your margin then you find yourself obliged to increase the price.

 

[Augusta]

This is what anyone going into business should know without a good customer base you can never make good business. the whole essence of buying and selling dwell solely on the buyers. if you are having products that are not being bought then you have to have a rethink because you might just be running at a loss. Like the story in the first post, the farm products might just be a waste if the owners don't source for customers that would be buying their products. The solution for me is that they either source for people that will be interested in their farm produces even if it means taking them far to sell or they change their farm produces and plsnt those that people would easily want to buy.