What do all business owners have in common? They all have access to a goldmine of data. How they choose to use this data greatly impacts the success of their business.
Many businesses miss the opportunity of thoroughly exploring their data gold mines; instead relying on short-term information seeking and implementation.
Data and Beyond
No business is exempt from data collection, all relevant data can serve a larger purpose within your organization. Use your sales, inventory, marketing and customer data to better target your current and future clients.
Pay attention and you will have:
- Actionable insights.
- Better interaction with your customers
- The knowledge to drive new marketing campaigns.
Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs) are vast in their possibilities. Use them right and you have an effective and targeted data gold mine.
Ideally, a CRM will have:
- Up-to-date customer contact details.
- A history of customer interactions e.g. calls, emails, service tickets.
- Sales and account statistics.
- A way to manage customer accounts e.g. recurring payments.
Need to create your own database on a group of customers? Make use of your export function.
Marketing Gold Mine
Use your customer records and marketing statistics to guide your campaigns, pricing and strategies. Analyze purchasing patterns and integrate the knowledge to boost sales.
Understand your Customers
Keep all of your customer data as clean as possible. Here are three quick strategies:
- Link Customer and Sales information:
You should be able to link each sale back to a customer.
You should be able to view the sales history for each customer. - Know the essentials:
You should know if a customer has requested a refund.
You should know how your customer found your company e.g. referral, social media.
You should know if a customer has left feedback. - Manage risk:
Gather qualitative information from staff members too by logging important interactions with each customer.
