The Importance Of Getting To Know Your Customers
Not every customer is the same. Getting to know each customer individually can have many benefits. Below are just some of the reasons why you should spend time getting to know your customers and what you can do to get to know your customers better.
Why get to know your customers?
Personalize your marketing tactics
Knowing your customers allows you to use marketing tactics tailored to their specific interests and needs. This could include personalized promotions when they visit your site or sending personalized emails.
Negotiate better deals
Getting to know customers is also important to principled negotiation. This involves developing relationships with customers so that you can negotiate without applying too much pressure. This reduces the risk of buyer’s remorse.
Generate loyal customers
Getting to know customers can also encourage loyalty. For example, remembering a customer’s name and their order in a coffee bar will often encourage them to keep coming back because they feel valued as a customer.
Encourage positive reviews
You can also encourage customers to write positive reviews by getting to know them better. Customers may view you as an acquaintance whose business they want to support.
Avoid taking on risky customers
There may be some customers who you do not want to work with. Getting to know prospective customers through background checks can prevent you taking on a customer who may be a fraudster or who may fail to pay you back.
How to get to know your customers
There are a few ways in which you can get to know your customers better:
Collect data (with their permission)
Collecting data of your customers’ previous purchases or web activity can help you to provide targeted promotions and a more personalized customer experience. This is particularly important when it comes to marketing to online customers. Just make sure that you ask for permission before collecting customer data.
Ask for individual feedback
After a customer has used your product or service, you can ask for feedback to help determine what they liked and what they didn’t like about your product/service. In the future, you may be able to then more effectively personalize your product or service to their needs. You could ask for this feedback face-to-face or via an email.
Make appropriate small talk
In face-to-face or phone conversations, you may be able to learn new things about customers simply by engaging in friendly small talk. Obviously, if you or the customer is busy, you may want to avoid small talk. However, if you’re not in a rush or your customer is waiting, take this opportunity to make conversation and get to know them better.
Know when to run background checks
Background checks can be useful for avoiding high-risk customers. This could include a credit check, ID check or proof of address. You don’t want to take on a customer who may damage your reputation or cause you to lose money.
Engage in conversation on social media
You can also get to know your customers on social media. Polls and questions can be a great way to encourage engagement – you could learn a lot from individual answers.