While it is obviously important to dedicate time, effort and resources to engage and convert new customers, any effective marketing strategy begins with analyzing and understanding your current customer base. Successful business owners understand the most valuable information about identifying and attracting your target market comes from those who have already purchased your product or engaged your services. Data gathered from these sources will provide the clearest and most meaningful information about the people who should be targeted for future business.
But beyond the benefits of analytical data on marketing and reaching new customers, information and input from your current customers can help you retain the business you already have. Retaining a current customer requires much less effort and fewer resources than it takes to bring in a new customer, and this is why customer satisfaction is so critical to business success. Listening to your customers and focusing on their experience will go a long way to improving the overall health of your company.
Worlds of Data
Obviously, it would be difficult– if not impossible– for a business owner to individually gather and read every bit of customer input that is provided about his or her business. Creating effective surveys and customer feedback tools are important, but they are only half the battle. You will need effective and intuitive software to analyze and compile the data once it has been returned, and there are many options available for this.
One product currently on the market even goes a step further and independently collects unstructured data in the form of tweets, emails, texts, reviews and other sources that provide useful information from your customers in regards to your company. In addition to the traditional data gathering and analyzation that is provided by most customer relationship management (CRM) software, Geckolyst Analytics Engine gathers countless other important data points that would otherwise go ignored and unread by those in your business.
CRM Software
Automated CRM software is designed to do the job of several employees, allowing business owners to keep hiring costs down and increase productivity at the same time. A properly implemented CRM system can help your business save on hiring costs in several departments, most notably marketing, customer support and sales.
Effective CRM software comes with intuitive support tools that provide invaluable data and assistance. The data collected by these systems would take entire teams of employees to gather and analyze, but automated CRM software provides the necessary information instantly in easily consumable formats. These tools may be an integrated part of the system itself or an included additional benefit. Some of these applications can actually anticipate customer questions, provide immediate chat responses and improve customer relationships.
A Step Further
Traditional customer input tools like surveys, feedback emails and others provide invaluable information that should be analyzed and understood by business owners. This information can help you make the necessary adjustments to improve customer satisfaction and ensure positive customer experiences going forward. Unfortunately, these sources are only helpful when customers are willing to participate, and this is not always the case.
Modern customer experience analytics must go a step further and dive into information that is not directly presented from the customer to the company. Online reviews, blogs, tweets and other sources like this provide much more valuable and honest information about the public opinion of your business. The most intuitive CRM systems– like the above mentioned Geckolyst– can gather this information from unstructured text-based sources and provide it in an easily consumable format.
Combining the data from direct sources and unstructured sources will give you access to much larger amounts of customer feedback– and a much higher quality of honest opinions and experiences. Once the information is gathered and analyzed, the system will provide tools to help you understand your customer experiences– and the root cause behind them– to create invaluable, actionable insights.
