Get To Know Your Customers

Get To Know Your Customers

A business is nothing without customers. There are lots of advantages to getting to know your customer base. It can help to encourage customer loyalty and identify problems within your business that may need improving.  Knowing your customers might even help you to market more efficiently. Here are several ways that you should be getting to know your clientele. 

Talk to your customers

The best way to understand your customers is to talk to them directly. In many professions, friendly small talk can gain the trust of customers. It might also help you to form long-lasting relationships with returning customers, helping to build their loyalty. You can also ask your customers directly for feedback, helping you to improve your business. Even if your entire business operates digitally such as an ecommerce site, you can still interact with your customers by allowing them to contact you with queries before buying and requesting them for feedback afterwards via email.

Keep digital records

A customer management system could be useful for getting to know your customers and encouraging professionalism. Such a system allows you to store personal data on each customer, giving you key information that you can bring up when talking to them. This could help you to names to faces and to develop a friendlier relationship with customers that persuades them to stay loyal.

Analyse web metrics

If you conduct business online, make sure that you’re analysing web metrics of everyone visiting your website and paying for your service. Using the likes of Google analytics its possible to find out the average age, gender and nationality of your customers, as well as which sites they’re coming from, which keywords they’re using and at what times they tend to visit. All of this data is important for marketing to your audience online.

Organise customer surveys

Many companies will ask clients to fill out surveys having completed a service for them. These surveys are there to identify strengths and weaknesses within the business. They can also be used to better understand the demographic of your customer base by including questions such as age, gender and location. The question ‘where did you find out about us?’ is the golden marketing question that can allow you to better focus your marketing tactics. Customer surveys can be given out as online forms or as physical customer satisfaction cards (as is popular in the hospitality trade).

Encourage reviews

Reviews shouldn’t be something you hide from. Whilst more public than surveys, they can similarly help to identify strengths and weaknesses within your business. After working with customers, prompt them to leave reviews on sites like Trip Advisor or on Google Plus. You should also encourage conversation on social media platforms. Negative feedback can be bad for your reputation but so long as you’re able to respond to this criticism professionally and show signs of improving, your reputation is likely to also improve.

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