Why Small Businesses Can’t Afford to Lose Sight of Their Customers

By Liezel Jonkheid, Director and Founder, Consumer Psychology Lab

Most small business owners I meet share a similar story. They started with a brilliant idea, poured their energy and capital into building a brand and business, and fought hard to win their first customers. But somewhere along the way - between juggling sales, operations, HR, marketing, and finances - their customers’ voice started to fade into the background.

The warning signs are subtle at first: a few more complaints, a couple of cancelled orders, fewer repeat sales, marketing spend goes up, but growth stalls. And then comes the sinking realisation: we’re losing customers, and we don’t know why.

Why surveys don’t solve the problem

For many entrepreneurs, the instinctive response is to roll out a customer survey. After all, that’s what big corporates do, right? But here’s the truth: surveys often give false comfort. And this is especially likely where the customer relationship with a SMB is a lot more personal than in a corporate space.

You might get some polite scores, because customers don’t want to rock the boat. You might feel reassured by high scores. But if nothing changes in your business, the survey did not provide you with the answers you need. Here’s the thing - customers don’t take surveys seriously, they mostly suffer from ‘survey-fatigue’ and often complete it to ‘do-the-right-thing’ because they feel obligated to or skip the survey altogether. And when you can’t ask ‘why’, you miss the deeper, meaningful story behind the score – which is exactly what you need to improve your customer experience.

Why authentic insight matters

Here’s where many small businesses unintentionally waste money: they end up fixing the wrong problems or they do nothing at all because they don’t understand the significance of the problem. Without authentic customer feedback, owners often rely on their own assumptions. For example, if sales are dipping, the immediate conclusion might be: our prices are too high or the marketing is not enough. The business then spends months discounting, cutting margins, chasing volume or increasing marketing initiatives- yet the sales keep declining.

In reality, the real issue could be something far simpler but more impactful: a clunky website checkout, a booking system that frustrates customers, or a tone-deaf onboarding process that leaves new clients feeling lost. Authentic customer conversations reveal these pain points directly, helping small businesses spend their limited resources on the right fixes - the ones that actually keep customers coming back.

In small businesses, this assumption gap is incredibly costly – in fact, it’s existential. Customers walk away quietly, vent on social media, tell others how lousy their experience was, or they simply switch to a competitor. You lose the opportunity to fix the problem, and worse, you lose the hefty investment you made in winning the customer in the first place.

The SME reality: research is out of reach

Big brands have entire departments and resources dedicated to customer research. They can afford platforms and analysts to decode the voice of the customer. For most SMBs, that’s entirely unrealistic when time, budget, and skills are already stretched thin.

But here’s the catch-22: customer insight isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s the difference between sustainable growth and endless churn and dwindling profits.

A new approach: conversations, not surveys

It’s solving this catch-22 that led to the development of the TEND™ Feedback-to-Growth Toolkit by Consumer Psychology Lab. It’s a simple, affordable way for small business owners to get closer to their customers - without the complexity or huge cost of hiring research firms – by talking to customers themselves – with a supported self-service product.

With TEND^TM, business owners get:

• TEND Playbook: A step-by-step guide to use the feedback-to-growth toolkit
• TEND Talks: The starting point - Guidelines on who to talk to, and what to ask
• TEND Insights: Making sense of the feedback - turning learnings into action
• TEND Tracker: How are we doing now?
• TEND Support: Support and guidance through the first round

It’s an affordable, practical do-it-yourself approach that’s backed and facilitated by more than 15 years of customer experience research and implementation.

The power of TEND^TM is in its simplicity and accessibility for small business owners. Instead of using surveys with limited value, it helps SMBs create space for real customer conversations. When customers feel heard, they open up and they share their authentic insights and experience with your business. And when business owners take the time to really listen to their customers’ feedback, they uncover the critical insights that drive loyalty, retention, and growth. The kind of insight that changes the trajectory of a business.

Closing the gap

Small businesses - the backbone of our economy and job creation - need the same access to customer insight that large corporates have - but in a way that’s practical and affordable. TEND^TM is designed to close that gap.

Because at the end of the day, your customers won’t remember the discount you offered or the ad campaign you ran. They’ll remember how you made them feel - and whether they felt heard and what you did about it.

For small businesses, that’s the difference between growth and customer churn.

https://consumerlab.co.za/tend-toolkit-for-small-business-owners/

Liezel Jonkheid is the Director and Founder of the Consumer Psychology Lab, a specialist consultancy helping businesses design customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth. Learn more at www.consumerlab.co.za.

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