The internet opens more ways to collect customer data than ever. Your main concern when you start collecting data should be protecting the privacy of the customer. With the information that is gathered, your goal should then to make sales and provide continuous worthwhile customer service.
Gathering the Information
There are many diverse ways to efficiently and quickly collect information from your customers. When a customer is in your store shopping and using an app, using the data-talks-to-data concept, you may be able send coupons or suggest a purchase while the customer is still in the store. They have a bargain right at their fingertips to immediately purchase. Also if you use customer surveys, the customer can tell you about their shopping experience or what products they would be interested in seeing on sale.
For behind the scenes online sales, there are data collecting software tools such as Google Analytics. These tools help you understand your customer demographics. The tools can provide demographic information from your customers such as their physical location as well as website URL. When a more personal approach is needed, you can use Live Chat Support for your Customer Service Department. Live Chat Support provides a more personal way to ask and answer questions in a more detailed and in depth manner.
How to Use the Feedback
When you analyze and summarize feedback, you make better business decisions. The way you approach the feedback can be either the micro or the macro approach. When using the micro approach, you focus on a specific concern of the customer such as what actions can be taken and how soon it can be applied. The macro approach is broader based. Its concerns are on the impact of larger customer segments. It focuses on how to change a whole process to better satisfy the clientele base. Any suggestions for change or improvements you act upon could require local or organization-wide improvements. The overall goal in both methods is to keep customer loyalty. The customer then experiences a happy shopping experience and you gain customer sentiment.
Respecting Customer Privacy
When a customer visits your company’s website, they provide their IP address, the webpages where they found your website, and the webpages they have been viewing. If your website has tracking cookies, you will gather even more personal information about the customer. Remember, you must guard all customer information collected by limiting access to only you and trusted employees. With the worry of customer privacy concerns, you need to improve customer satisfaction, gain their trust, and avoid chances of legal actions against you. By posting information about your website privacy policies, it balances your needs for data with the customers’ needs and reassures them about their privacy concerns.
As your customers become more aware of the method and volume their information is being gathered, they also can become more distrustful of the methods used. It’s up to you to reassure them their information is only be used to improve customer satisfaction and service. Successful businesses which are thoughtfully obtaining and securing customer information will see an increase in business and in winning greater loyalty.
Image courtesy of 89studio / freedigitalphotos.net
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