Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/937683
10 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2018 What is the cost of not meeting a customer's needs? Predictably, the most common answer was lost customer or lost business (although some- one did answer "I don't know"). Perhaps the most important questions we asked had to do with feedback: What type of feedback do you like? Responses ranged from "thank you," to tes- timonials, to learning customers' roadmaps, to getting repeat business. One person answered, "Successful first builds are the most rewarding." How many of your customers provide feedback? This resulted in an even distribution, mean- ing a quarter of our respondents said 25% or less of their customers pro- vided it, another quarter said 25−50%, and so forth. So just about 25% of the re- spondents could be said to get a lot of feedback. Many said that good feedback or good rat - ings were most impor- tant, but if you think about it, what y ou real- ly want is the bad, oth- erwise you won't feel a need to improve. So let's see what our go- to experts say on Who's Your Customer? We talked with Dan Beaulieu and Sunstone's Nolan Johnson along with The Right Approach's Steve Williams (in a sepa- rate discussion) to get their thoughts on this question that is right up their alley. Not sur- prisingly, Dan and Nolan were totally focused on the external customer while Steve Williams considered the internal customer. Read more in our first two feature articles this month. But Steve and Dan were just getting start- ed. Steve came back with a short article on understanding your customer by expanding on the new ISO requirement of defining inter- ested parties. Dan wrote his own column on "getting to know your customer" and also con- tributed a separate story on great customer service. Go Dan! Several other columnists also found this top- ic intriguing. Omni PCB's Tara Dunn used the metaphor of customers as guests invited to a party, and then went on to explain how this considerably changes one's thinking as to who your customers really are (or perhaps who you want as customers). Dan Feinberg (Fein-Line Associates) was in- spired to jot down his thoughts on the topic. He looked at the question from the perspec- tive of a person's career goals, illustrating with his personal experiences. PNC's Sam Sangani answered our topic question by pointing out that one sells much more than a product; the customer's total experience with your company is what sets you apart from the many others with a product to sell. To further illustrate that point, we have an in- terview by Dan Beau- lieu with Millennium Circuits' Dan Thau. The emphasis is all on customer service and consultative selling— being everything you can possibly be to your customer. In other content this month, Elmatica's Jan Ped- ersen gives us a column on the 20% said 26% said 27% said 1-25% 26-50% 76-100% 51-75% Percent of customers who provide feedback. 27% said