What Are You Doing To Solve Your Customer's Problems?

Post date: May 20, 2013 11:36:26 AM

If you subscribe to business podcasts, blogs and the like you will be very familiar with how they encourage you to constantly be on the lookout for problems you can solve that will enable you to increase the products and/or services you can provide to your customers.Today an example of this philosophy really hit home to me and I would like to share it with you.We recently purchased a new coffee machine for our home and although it is a great little unit, my wife made comment that it would be even better if the milk was warmer.I started having a look online for some way to fix this "problem" and was fascinated to find out that my wife was not the only person complaining about the temperature of the milk - apparently people in Europe (where the coffee machine is made) prefer their milk cooler than people in places like Australia (where we are based) and the USA and there were numerous comments in online forums from people who wished someone could figure out a way to make the milk warmer.

The first thing that went through my mind was "if anyone could come up with a solution to this, there is money to be made here".

Further reading revealed that a solution had already been found - if the plastic tube that heats the milk is of a smaller diameter, the pressure created actually heats the milk up more than the standard tube.

This got me thinking about business opportunities that are out there - using the example above, there is obviously a "problem" with this coffee machine (multiple online posts from different countries throughout the world complaining about the milk temperature prove this to be the case) and if the solution is as simple as putting a thinner tube into a milk jug, couldn't a business be set up to solve this problem for everyone throughout the world?

Of course there would need to be testing to ensure the "thinner tube" solution is true, but assuming this is the case, how hard is it to get a website set up from an organisation like ATLweb.com and sell the thinner tubes, while at the same time promoting yourself as the "go to person for advice on how to get your coffee milk hotter"?

How many problems are occurring in your chosen niche similar to the one described above that you can solve and turn into a profitable business with little to no effort?