Any fear, uncertainty, or doubt that stands between your online customer and a successful checkout must be removed for your business to succeed. In a world bombarded by bad news of security breeches, hackers, and spam, customers are more and more weary of anything that doesn’t feel right.

After seeing an advertisement for CarMD, an automotive self-diagnostic tool, I went to their website. When I clicked the “Checkout” button, I got a security error:

I knew from experience that this error was probably benign. Since I have purchased secure certificates for some ecommerce sites I have built, I knew that this error is easy to get if things aren’t setup properly.

However, most people who shop online don’t also make websites. For the majority of people, a cryptic error message like what I saw may be enough to scare someone away.

To CarMD’s credit, they have since fixed the problem. Fortunately for them, they have removed one roadblock to people purchasing online. But what about your company? Is there something standing in the way of the customer making a purchase on your website?

People are typically more vocal about what they don’t want than what they do want. Your business needs to be sensitive to what customers are trying to communicate when they state their preferences.

Make a Choice

Imagine you had to choose one of the following:

• Being forced to do something you hate
• Not being able to do something you love

Which would you prefer?

Odds are you’d elect to not do something you love. Sure you’d be disappointed, but at least you would avoid doing that one thing you despise.

Listening to Customers

Your customers will express their likes and dislikes to you in various ways. They speak with their actions, buying habits, or product selection. They may even tell you “I like this” or “I don’t want that.”

Are you listening?

You should listen very carefully. Why? Because people are more adamant about what they don’t want.

If you turn around and deliver something they told you they didn’t want, they are prone to be very unhappy about it.

This summer we hired a contractor to deliver a logo for us. During the process we explicitly told them that we didn’t want or like certain items. Imagine our surprise when they returned with logos that incorporated the very things we didn’t want!

When Not to Listen

There is, however, a flip side to handling customer preferences. You have to temper your customer’s desires with your expertise. Often times your customers may be saying one thing, but they don’t really know what they want. You, as the expert, will need to explain why the best solution may contradict their preferences.

The key to using your expertise is to do so before you deliver the product to the customer. You need to share your rationale and logic up-front so that the customer agrees with what the final product will or will not include.

You’ll need to tread carefully with customer’s preferences. If you mess up, they will surely dislike you and be all the more likely to share that bad experience with their friends and family.

Does your company tell customers what to do? Or does it do it for them?

Whenever I get out of my car and leave the headlights on, my car starts to ding a little warning. This ding continues until I take action and turn off the lights. It is annoying, but that is the point: the car wants me to take action.

My wife’s minivan, however has a different philosophy. When I leave those lights on and get out of the car, I’m greeted with silence. No ding. No siren. No annoyance. Instead of barking at me, the minivan simply turns off the lights.

Do you see the difference between these two?

One repeatedly tells me what to do. The other understands the situation and does it for me.

So how does this apply to your business? Let’s look at a few examples.

Anticipate Needs

A customer comes into your store to make a return. You know the end result the customer wants. You can tell the customer to call your corporate offices, or you could facilitate the return and take action. Which do you choose?

Telling your customer to handle it themselves is the equivalent of the car dinging incessantly waiting for the driver to take action.

Expend Energy Wisely

Your business has some unused capacity, inventory, or supplies. The money has already been spent on those items. You can now use those leftovers to the benefit of your existing customers.

Our cars probably use about the same amount of energy to ding at us as they do to simply turn off the lights. Why not use your energy and activities to help the customer along?

See the Patterns

Your customers often form certain behavioral patterns. When you identify these, you can make logical guesses at what they will do or need next. When you anticipate customer needs you can not only “wow” the customer but create internal efficiencies that improve your profit margins and bottom line.

Asking for customer feedback is only one piece of the puzzle. You can’t forget to take action and improve your business based on what you learn from feedback and your own observations.

My business uses a mailbox service for our post office box. The other day a publisher sent me a book to review. I took the “you have a package” card from my mailbox and handed it to the girl behind the counter.

She searched diligently for my package but couldn’t find it. She pulled in the manager to look for it as well. Neither was successful.

Since I didn’t have any information about the sender, package, or courier service, I couldn’t jump over the counter and find it myself.

At the time, the staff didn’t really know what to do with me. I said I would contact the sender and get some details on the package.

A few days later, we got a call from the mailbox service that my package had been located.

When I went to pick it up, I asked what had happened. She told me that they were implementing a new logging system to prevent accidents like this from happening again. In so doing, they located my package at the bottom of a stack of boxes.

Don’t Let It Happen Again

While the initial confusion of my lost package was disturbing, the mailbox store recovered nicely. The key lesson learned is that they realized the mistake and implemented a new process to prevent the same issue from happening again.

Everyone makes mistakes. Your business will too. Great companies learn from their mistakes, identify the problem, and change their process to prevent recurrences of the same problem. Inefficient companies are plagued by the same issues over and over again. Customers will tire of such incompetence over time and move on to do business with the company that does learn from its mistakes.