Cities Skylines 2: Best tips and tricks to fix "not enough customers"

While Cities Skylines 2 has a solid tutorial, one thing it doesn’t cover is what to do if you have a “not enough customers” situation. At first, it’s likely not going to be a huge issue, but it’s not something you should let go in your city for too long. After all, businesses not having customers means reduced revenue. This hurts your taxes, the happiness of your city, and could also have other dire consequences.

If you’re trying to keep everyone happy, consider solving this problem as soon as it comes up in Paradox Interactive’s latest building simulator. This is a problem you can correct in a few ways, depending on what you feel like doing in Cities Skylines 2. Unfortunately, it’s not always going to be clear what is causing the problem for your city, but there are some more general causes.

Here’s what you need to know about the “not enough customers” issue in the game.

---

Dealing with the “not enough customers” message in Cities Skylines 2

1) Consider traffic, traffic jams, and ways to get to businesses

Make sure your citizens have easy access to businesses. (Image via Paradox Interactive)

One of the easiest solutions is one you can start working on as you build your city. In Cities Skylines 2, you don’t want to have major traffic jams or other issues. You need to make sure there are plenty of good roads, not to mention public transportation that leads to businesses you want to see succeed. If you’re having issues with “not enough customers”, look at your roads and public transportation.

Having pedestrian paths also helps. Some people prefer to walk to business, especially if they are nearby or there’s parking to stop at. On that note, you’ll also want decent parking for your commercial zones so they have a place to stop at.

---

2) Lower taxes on specific businesses (or all businesses)

Don't reduce taxes too much! (Image via Paradox Interactive)

If you are suffering from the “not enough customers” alarm in Paradox Interactive’s latest game, you have some other options available. If you have solid pathing, you also want to take a look at how your taxes are set. If you lower the taxes on all businesses, you’ll definitely start losing money - they’re your income, after all.

But it will make business owners happier and can bring more customers. Instead of lowering all businesses’ taxes in Cities Skylines 2, look at the businesses you have available. If some of them are struggling to bring income, consider these your “not enough customers” targets, and try making life easier for them.

---

3) Look at how your businesses are zoned

If the roads are green, you should have successful commercial zones. (Image via Paradox Interactive)

However, in most cases, it’s probably going to be the zoning of your city in general. This is one of the major culprits of the “not enough customers” error within Cities Skylines 2. You can prevent this as you go by simply paying attention to how you’re setting up your city. As you build a commercial zone, use the Zoning Tool.

It will highlight the roads leading to the zones with colors ranging from Green (great) to Red (very bad). If you see a color closer to a dark green, it’s an ideal place for your business and should hopefully avoid the monetary issues other zones could incur.

You don’t want to overzone your commercial areas, though. Too many businesses will mean too much competition. Then, your city residents won’t be able to shop at them all, and thus, not enough customers.

It takes time to master fixing this problem, but it will be worth doing. (Image via Paradox Interactive)

When creating commercial zones, also take into account the “commercial suitability” and “customer” statistics. You can see this in Info Views. It takes some practice, but with enough patience and attention to detail, you can stop customer issues before they ever crop up in Cities Skylines 2. It also appears to help if commercial zones are reasonably close to residential so customers can get there faster.

---

These are just some ways you can prevent or nullify this particular problem in Cities Skylines 2. While the new city building game is impressive, it has been plagued by performance issues, to which the developers have responded.