Do you know everything there is to know about your customers? It's possible with customer knowledge tools!
How important is customer knowledge ? Far from being just another customer relationship management (CRM) trick, good customer knowledge can be a real growth driver for your company.
Indeed, your organization's success depends on its ability to respond as effectively as possible to the needs and expectations of its customers, in order to satisfy them and ultimately win their loyalty. After all, customers are one of your company's most precious resources!
What exactly are the challenges of customer knowledge for the development of your business? How can you better understand who's behind your customers? What data should you rely on, and what tools should you use to gather it?
Learn how to break down the masks, so that your customers no longer hold any secrets for you, and your customer loyalty rates take off!
What is customer knowledge?
Customer knowledge refers to all the information a company holds on its customers. It refers to both the data collected by the company and all the means it can put in place to enrich its customer database.
The aim of this approach is to obtain concrete data such as :
- a customer's contact details
- the history of their exchanges with your company,
- consumption habits, etc.
It can even go so far as to provide a detailed, even anticipatory understanding of your customers' preferences and needs, with a view to better satisfying them.
From personal to transactional data, every piece of customer information contributes to the success of your projects, at every level and department of the company (sales, marketing, customer support, etc.).
Gathered, used and analyzed with care, this data helps you develop the most effective customer-centric strategy possible.
Here are the main types of data that make up customer knowledge:
- socio-demographic data (age, level of education, family situation, etc.),
- purchasing behavior (purchase history, product returns, services used, etc.),
- interactions with the brand (preferred channels, use of customer support, time spent on your site's pages, abandonment rates, etc.),
- social activity (comments on social networks, shares, messages, etc.),
- customer feedback (opinions, feedback on satisfaction questionnaires, etc.).
The more varied and numerous this data is, the more useful it becomes in creating a 360° vision of your typical customer or marketing persona.
What are the challenges of customer knowledge?
The need to adapt to changing behaviors
With the growing role of digital technology in their lifestyles, customers are proving more complex to satisfy than ever: more demanding, more connected, better informed, adept at new technologies, looking to buy more consciously, less excessively, and so on.
For their business to thrive, brands must continue to seduce their customers and win over new hearts. That's why it's in their best interest to gather together all possible elements to prepare for changing consumer behavior, so as to be able to adapt to these changes and continue to evolve in the right direction.
This can take the form of :
- better communication of brand values,
- greater transparency in the production chain
- a smooth , pleasant customer experience across all channels, etc.
💡 Brands that choose to listen to their customers and take these expectations into account as they go along avoid the risk of their customers turning away from them for the competition.
Continuous improvement of the value proposition
Knowing your customers' needs, expectations and preferences is a great asset for your company. It provides you with invaluable indicators for formulating a product and service offering that is always as close as possible to their expectations, and for evolving it by adapting it to your targets.
By studying their behavior and interactions with your brand, as well as their direct feedback, you'll know exactly what you need to work on: from the design of your products to any friction points that need to be eliminated in order to offer quality service.
You'll remove the bottlenecks and make a real qualitative difference, a real differentiating asset in a hyper-competitive market where offers tend to resemble each other: stand out for your outstanding service, and your ability to delight the customer!
Advances in predictive analysis
Customer knowledge can also go as far as predicting future customer behavior, in order to deploy an adapted product and service offering with a head start.
Cutting-edge technologies such as Big Data, machine learning and artificial intelligence enable brands to detect changes in consumer desires and expectations, and adapt their offering accordingly.
Predictive customer analysis enables brands to demonstrate agility and proactivity in order to develop tailor-made offers to aim for complete customer satisfaction.
Customer knowledge and loyalty
Customer knowledge is an essential step in building and enriching your customer loyalty strategy.
You can collect and analyze data that will give you a better understanding of your customers, and enable you to serve them more effectively on a number of levels:
- proposing an offer that perfectly meets an identified need , or even exceeds their expectations;
- study the customer journey to constantly improve it, personalize it and offer a memorable customer experience.
👉 The result? More informed decision-making, more effective marketing campaigns, and ultimately greater customer satisfaction. Customer loyalty itself generates sales, by encouraging renewed shopping experiences and higher average baskets.
How to refine customer knowledge?
So the question arises: how can you get to know your customers better? Here are 4 steps to discovering your customers' secrets right away:
1 - Exploit every possible channel
Your aim is to gather all the information you can to get the most complete and accurate picture of your customers. To achieve this, all sales and communication channels are of interest in enriching your customer knowledge:
- your website,
- your points of sale
- social networks,
- your customer relations center, etc.
💡 Set up systems to collect this data and involve all the departments concerned, especially your customer support team.
This is made easier by the digitalization of customer relations: you're able to capture your customers' interactions across a multitude of touchpoints, and pinpoint what's working or what's lacking.
2 - Identify relevant indicators
It's not just a question of getting to know your customers better, but also of identifying the best indicators, which are the most revealing for you, in terms of :
- customer satisfaction: health score, brand recommendation index (NPS or Net Promoter Score), difficulties encountered (CES or Customer Effort Score), etc. ;
- consumption habits : frequency of purchases, preferred consumption channels or locations, tools or services used, etc.
- digital behavior: connection times, time spent on your site's key pages, purchases made, shopping cart abandonments, etc.
- exchanges with your after-sales service: problems encountered and/or resolved, sources of dissatisfaction, etc.
3 - Segment your customer database
Refining your knowledge of your customers also means knowing how to segment them. To do this, try to establish typologies of consumers interested in your brand, grouping them according to different criteria:
- socio-demographic: age, income, level of education, etc.
- psychographic: personality, interests, lifestyle, values, etc.
- geographical: place of residence, data from local sales outlets, such as checkouts, interactions with sales staff, services available on site, etc.
- behavioral: average shopping basket, channel used, payment method chosen, preferred delivery system, etc.
You'll then be in a better position to establish buyer personas to :
- better target your marketing campaigns ,
- deliver more effective messages,
- personalize and improve your value proposition.
💡 Thinking carefully about your customer segmentation enables you to sort, organize and exploit data intelligently. Ultimately, you're better able to act effectively according to the segments identified, at the right time and with the right message.
4 - Talk directly to your customers
How better to find out what your customers want from you, than by collecting feedback directly from them? Whether you use customer satisfaction forms or questionnaires on a specific issue, you're sending out a positive signal at the same time: their voice counts, and you're taking it into consideration.
Design a precise, hard-hitting questionnaire, precisely targeting the information you want to obtain:
- Which of your products do they need?
- Which contact channel do they prefer (phone, chat, email, physical meeting, etc.)?
- What problems have they encountered with your brand? etc.
This data will be varied and of high quality, and will even enable you to collect the customer verbatim that is essential for accurately identifying your areas for improvement.
The 7 tools of customer knowledge
- Marketing platforms: there are complete marketing platforms for deploying your marketing operations and setting up personalized customer paths. Such is the case with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Thanks to its Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform tool, you can connect all the data from your various software applications and channels to better understand each customer and his or her needs, and intelligently automate your targeting and segmentation actions.
- Customer Data Platform (CDP) : the solution that gives you a 360° view of your customer base. This is the case with software such as Twilio Segment, which collects, unifies and updates all your customer data, regardless of the channels used. The result is more relevant communications and an ultra-personalized customer experience.
- CRM : this software facilitates customer relationship management, centralizing and sharing customer data throughout the company. It keeps track of the customer's history, from their purchases to their interactions with the brand, so that it can be analyzed and used to offer them a personalized response.
- Web analytics tools: tools can help you gain a better understanding of your website users (e.g. Google Analytics), by mining data on their digital journey. Their analysis will enable you to improve their search for information, their navigation and their transactions.
- Social listening tools : specialized software enables you to detect all mentions of your brand on the web, from forums to social networks and review sites, based on given terms (company name, product name, etc.). Observing conversations about your brand is a very useful way of expanding your customer knowledge.
- Satisfaction questionnaires : these surveys provide direct, precise feedback, and can be used to complement customer satisfaction indicators (such as CES or NPS).
- Self-care tools : these are used to support customers and guide them through the process, enabling them to obtain information quickly and independently (e.g. dynamic FAQs, forums, chatbots, etc.). They are invaluable allies in providing you with information on your customers' uses, their digital behavior and their main searches.
The importance of customer knowledge
Are you still wondering about the usefulness of customer knowledge?
It's the first fundamental step in building effective marketing and sales strategies, whether it's improving customer service, winning new customers or proposing new offers in line with customer needs.
Turn customer knowledge to your advantage by exploiting the maximum amount of information at your disposal to get to know your target from every angle. This will enable you to take the temperature of customer satisfaction, adapt your efforts accordingly, and carry out targeted, ultra-personalized actions.
It's the best way to deliver a seamless customer experience that will make your offer more attractive, and the royal road to customer loyalty!
Article translated from French