The Importance of Understanding What The Customer Wants

Why it's important to have a clear idea of what the customer wants.

Dealing with customers can be frustrating, tricky and most of the time, it can be pretty fun as well. The biggest frustrations that both clients and employees run into are almost always caused by poor communication. It's not just that most of us don't know how to listen critically. It's also because of the sad fact that trying to explain an idea or an image that's in your head to someone who doesn't have a clear frame of reference and can't see into your mind is tricky at best and almost always going to be not-quite-right.

It happens all the time. Especially when you work in a job where you are responsible for making an item that a customer has ordered. Bakers, photographers, artist, graphic designers, manufacturers and even hairstylists struggle with this problem. For example, when you are looking for a new job and browsing the job boards, you're bound to see job descriptions that are unclear. When you read over them, it's obvious that the author assumed that the reader would know what they meant. But, none of us are mind readers.

This same failure of communication happens when businesses have products designed and manufactured. They are the ones who have probably spent months or even years trying to perfect the idea and come up with the exact thing that they need. Because it's so familiar to them, they aren't able to accurately describe what they need to the designer.

Then, the designer has the same problem when it comes time to communicate with the manufacturing company. From there, it goes down the line until the end product isn't anything like the vision in the customer's head.

When dealing with making a customer's vision become a reality, this can be frustrating and stressful. If it's every happened to you, here is an illustration that should give you a laugh:




Even though it's silly, it clearly explains the problem. There is no substitute for good communication.

Have you run into situations like this? Please share your stories in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for ManufacturingWorkersBlog and Nexxt. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.