"What does my customer want?" It sounds like a simple question. Dr. Yogesh Pawar explains why customer needs should always remain a business priority — and how better interaction, not assumption, is what uncovers them.
Dr. Yogesh Pawar
Founder, School of Inspirational Leadership
Knowing what a customer buys is not the same as understanding what they actually need.
Most businesses believe they understand their customers. They know which products customers purchase, what price they pay, and how frequently they place an order. But this information does not always reveal what the customer truly needs.
A customer may purchase a product because it solves an immediate problem. However, the customer's actual expectations may also include faster service, greater reliability, clearer communication, simpler implementation, or reduced business risk. If entrepreneurs do not understand these deeper expectations, they may continue improving features that customers do not value while ignoring the issues that influence buying decisions.
In the SIL Masterclass, "What Does My Customer Want?", Dr. Yogesh Pawar explains that customer needs should always remain a business priority. The video highlights customer interaction as an important way to identify and understand those needs.
Understanding customers is not a one-time research activity. It requires regular conversations, careful observation, active listening, and the willingness to improve the business based on genuine customer insight.
7 ways to understand what your customer wants
Prefer watching? Jump to the full SIL masterclass session below, or keep reading for the detailed breakdown.
If the business does not understand what customers value, it may struggle with:
Understanding customer needs helps the organisation make better decisions across marketing, sales, product development, service delivery, and customer support.
It helps entrepreneurs answer important questions such as:
The video's central message: entrepreneurs must learn how to extract customer needs through better interaction rather than relying only on internal assumptions.
Customers do not always describe their requirements in a complete or structured manner.
What the customer says
"Your price is too high."
The immediate assumption may be that the business needs to reduce its price. However, the customer may actually mean:
The pattern repeats everywhere
When a customer asks for faster delivery, the underlying need may be business continuity, customer commitment, inventory planning, or reduced operational risk.
Entrepreneurs must learn to go beyond the first statement and understand the reason behind it. This requires thoughtful questions and active listening.
Everything covered so far — and what's ahead — comes from this SIL Masterclass session, 'What Does My Customer Want?'. Watch it in full, or continue reading below.
Way 1 of 7
Before trying to understand customer needs, the business must clarify which customer it wants to serve. Not every person or organisation will be equally suitable for your product or service.
A consumer-focused company may consider:
Avoid trying to serve everyone
When the target customer is too broad, the business may struggle to create focused marketing, sales, and service strategies. For example, a consulting company that serves start-ups, family businesses, large corporations, retailers, manufacturers, and professionals may find it difficult to communicate one clear value proposition.
Each segment may have different needs, budgets, decision-making structures, and expectations. A clearly defined customer segment makes it easier to understand what matters most to that customer.
Create an ideal customer profile — document:
A business-to-business company may evaluate customers based on:
Way 2 of 7
Customer needs cannot be understood properly through questions that produce only "yes" or "no" answers.
Instead of asking:
Closed question
"Are you happy with our service?"
Ask:
Open-ended question
"What has been your experience with our service?"
Ask follow-up questions
The first answer may not reveal the complete need. When a customer mentions a problem, continue with questions such as:
Avoid leading the customer
A leading question encourages the customer to provide the answer the business wants to hear.
Leading question — avoid
"Wouldn't a faster system solve your problem?"
Useful questions include:
Way 3 of 7
Customer interaction is not only about asking questions — it is also about listening carefully to the answers. Salespeople and entrepreneurs sometimes begin preparing their response while the customer is still speaking, moving too quickly towards explaining the product without fully understanding the customer's situation.
Confirm your understanding
After listening, summarise the customer's requirement, for example:
"If I have understood correctly, your main concern is not only the delivery time. The delay also affects your production schedule and customer commitments. Is that correct?"
This gives the customer an opportunity to confirm or correct your understanding. It also shows that you are genuinely trying to understand the business impact rather than simply completing a sales conversation.
Listen for emotional needs — customers may also want:
For example, a customer purchasing a maintenance service may not only want equipment repair — they may want assurance that production will not stop unexpectedly. Understanding this emotional need can improve how the organisation positions and delivers the service.
Active listening requires the entrepreneur to:
Way 4 of 7
Customers may say one thing and do another. This does not necessarily mean they are being dishonest — their behaviour may reveal priorities they have not clearly expressed.
Search for patterns
One customer's opinion may be useful, but repeated behaviour across several customers provides stronger evidence. For example:
Observation helps entrepreneurs identify gaps customers may not report formally.
Businesses should observe:
Way 5 of 7
Customer feedback should not be limited to an annual survey. The organisation should collect feedback at important stages of the customer journey.
Different stages provide different insights. For example, feedback after onboarding may reveal whether the process was easy to understand. Feedback after a complaint may show whether the customer felt heard and supported.
Keep feedback simple — ask a limited number of meaningful questions:
Close the feedback loop
Collecting feedback without taking action can damage trust. When customers share meaningful feedback:
Feedback stages may include:
Way 6 of 7
Employees who interact regularly with customers often have useful insights — sales representatives, customer-service executives, account managers, delivery and installation teams, technical support, and more. They hear customer questions, complaints, objections, and suggestions every day.
However, these insights may remain with individual employees unless the organisation creates a process to capture them.
Avoid dismissing frontline feedback
Senior leaders may have access to reports, but customer-facing employees experience the customer's practical reality. Their feedback should be evaluated alongside data and direct customer conversations.
Conduct regular customer-insight reviews — ask frontline teams:
Way 7 of 7
Understanding the customer has little value if the business does not act on what it learns.
Prioritise improvements — evaluate each suggestion based on:
A single custom request may not justify changing the complete offering. However, repeated feedback from an important customer segment may indicate a genuine market need.
Communicate improvements
When customer feedback leads to a change, communicate it, for example:
"Based on customer feedback, we have simplified our onboarding process and introduced a single point of contact for project updates."
This demonstrates that the organisation values customer input and takes improvement seriously.
Customer insights should influence:
Customers may express a want, but the business must understand the need behind it.
Entrepreneurs should respect what customers request while exploring why the request matters. The deeper need can help the business create a more effective solution.
A customer journey map shows the different stages through which a customer interacts with the business.
For each stage, document:
Example: Customer enquiry stage
Journey mapping helps the organisation understand the customer experience across departments rather than evaluating each interaction separately.
These questions should guide the conversation, not make it feel like an interrogation.
Understanding the current situation
Understanding the impact
Understanding the desired result
Understanding the buying decision
Understanding future needs
Speaking More Than Listening
The purpose of customer discovery is to understand the customer, not simply explain the offering.
Presenting the Solution Too Early
A premature recommendation may fail to address the customer's actual problem.
Asking Leading Questions
Leading questions may produce agreement rather than genuine insight.
Assuming All Customers Want the Same Thing
Different customer segments can have different needs and purchase criteria.
Focusing Only on Price
Price objections may indicate unclear value, insufficient trust, or unsuitable commercial terms.
Ignoring Lost Customers
Customers who stop buying can provide valuable insight into service, quality, price, or competitor performance.
Collecting Feedback Without Taking Action
Customers may stop sharing feedback if they see no visible response.
Depending Only on Surveys
Direct conversations and behavioural data can reveal insights that surveys may miss.
Promising Everything Requested
Not every customer request is commercially or operationally suitable for the business.
Failing to Document Insights
Customer knowledge should become organisational knowledge rather than remaining with one salesperson or founder.
Sales conversations become more effective when the salesperson understands the customer's problem, impact, and desired result. Instead of presenting every feature, the salesperson can focus on the aspects most relevant to that customer.
What a needs-based pitch sounds like
"You mentioned that delayed information is affecting customer commitments. Our central dashboard gives your team one view of project status, helping them identify delays before they affect the customer."
This connects the offering directly with the customer's need. The purpose of customer interaction is not to manipulate the customer into purchasing — it is to understand whether the business can genuinely solve the customer's problem.
Better customer understanding can improve:
Customer insight helps the organisation decide:
Entrepreneurs can become emotionally attached to their products and services. This can make it difficult to accept that customers may value different features from those the business owner considers important.
Before making a significant product investment, test the idea with suitable customers. Understand whether the proposed feature solves a meaningful problem and whether customers are willing to adopt or pay for it.
MSMEs may have fewer resources than larger organisations, but they often have one important advantage: closer customer relationships. The founder or leadership team may interact directly with customers and respond more quickly to feedback.
However, as the business grows, customer knowledge can become fragmented. Sales may understand objections. Service teams may understand complaints. Operations may understand delivery challenges. Leadership may review only the final reports.
A structured voice-of-the-customer process brings these insights together. The SIL Masterclass positions customer interaction as an essential entrepreneurial skill for uncovering what customers truly need.
For an MSME, better customer understanding can support:
Use this checklist when evaluating customer needs.
Customer profile
Customer problem
Customer expectations
Customer interaction
Customer feedback
Customer experience
Improvement
Understanding what customers want is not about asking one question and accepting the first answer.
It is a continuous process of interaction, listening, observation, analysis, and improvement. Entrepreneurs should:
The SIL Masterclass emphasises that customer needs should always remain a business priority and that entrepreneurs must improve their customer-interaction skills to uncover those needs effectively.
Customers may not always describe the complete solution they require. However, they can provide valuable information about their problems, priorities, frustrations, and desired outcomes. The entrepreneur's responsibility is to listen carefully, ask the right questions, and turn that understanding into meaningful customer value.
The most useful question is not simply:
"What do we want to sell?"
It is:
"What meaningful problem does our customer need us to solve?"
A business can understand customer needs by defining its ideal customer, asking open-ended questions, listening actively, observing customer behaviour, collecting feedback and analysing repeated customer concerns.
Understanding customer needs helps a business improve its products, services, marketing, sales communication, customer experience and retention.
Entrepreneurs should ask customers about their current challenges, existing solutions, desired outcomes, buying priorities, concerns, decision-making process and definition of success.
Active listening means giving the customer complete attention, avoiding unnecessary interruptions, asking relevant follow-up questions and confirming what has been understood.
A customer want is the solution or feature the customer requests. The underlying need is the problem, objective or outcome that makes the request important.
Businesses can collect feedback after enquiries, purchases, onboarding, delivery, complaint resolution, renewals, cancellations and lost sales opportunities.
Customer feedback helps businesses understand objections, improve value communication, create more relevant proposals and address concerns that prevent customers from purchasing.
MSMEs can become more customer-centric by regularly speaking with customers, documenting insights, involving customer-facing employees, reviewing complaints and using customer feedback in business decisions.
SIL works with entrepreneurs and growing businesses to identify customer needs, strengthen business strategy, and develop structured systems for sustainable growth.