If you ask customers what they value, they will tell you. Obviously, first you have to be smart enough to ask them, and then you have to be smart enough to listen.
In 2024, a major firm asked its customers what made them likely to recommend that firm. The ten most frequent responses were ranked from 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important.
The most important factor was customer support. Fully 12% of customers said that mattered more than any financial considerations, including payment terms and price.
Then the customers told the firm what aspects of customer support made them likely to recommend the firm. There were four frequent responses.
The most important part of customer support was documentation. By kind of a lot – 37% of customers said that was the big deal. (Phone support was dead last at 2%.)
The customer support results were weighed by the amount of money the customer was spending. In other words, the customers spending the most money were the ones that valued documentation the most.
As far as I know, no executive has ever read this blog. But you might think that the executive suite would like to know that their biggest customers value documentation the most. Yes, more than price.
Here’s my message to my fellow technical writers: Know your worth.