10 Things to Know About Your Customers

10 Things to Know About Your Customers

August 18, 2021

10 Things to Know About Your Customers

August 18, 2021In a difficult and competitive economic environment, it has become more important than ever to know your customers well in order to increase loyalty and, more generally, increase sales. All the large companies have understood this, as shown by the rapid development of the customer-centric approach. To help you in your customer knowledge approach and in designing your surveys, here are 10 things you should absolutely know about your customers.

1 – Who Your Customers Are

It’s the first and most obvious thing that comes mind: knowing your customers and, above all, who they are. We could talk about knowing them on a sociodemographic level: are your customers mainly men or women? On average, how old are they? Where do they live? What’s their working situation (contract type, sector)? What’s their family status (single, married)?
Your marketing actions will be different based on whether more of your customers are male or female, for example. While this knowledge is essential, it’s not all there is to know. It’s important to have a richer and more detailed understanding of your customers.

2 – What Your Customers Like (Their Hobbies)

To respond to your customers’ needs as best as possible, you need to know their likes, hobbies (sports, culture) and interests. More generally, their values, their lifestyle. This knowledge will allow you to better target and personalise your marketing campaigns. An offer that is in line with the interests or hobbies of the customer will be more efficient than any other.

3- Why They Are Buying

Your objective as a company is to sell products and/or services. Until proven otherwise, your sales make up the bulk of your turnover. You want your customers to buy your products. But it’s very useful to know why your customers are buying and what pushes them to buy, to be able to adapt to their needs and decide what actions you should take. If you know the reason your customers are buying and what makes them pull the trigger, you will know what you need to do to boost your sales.

4- When Your Customers Buy

Your customers have buying patterns, they don’t buy randomly. Thanks to surveys and your CRM, it’s possible to know when your customers shop the most, the peak time slots purchases are made. This knowledge will allow you to reach your customer base at the best moment and improve your marketing actions’ ROI.

5 – Your Customers’ Behaviour

The time of purchase is part of your customers’ behavioural habits. But that’s not the only habit they have. It’s in your interest to dive deeper and find out more about your customers behaviour and the way in which they shop.
A concrete example is: do they mainly shop from their mobile (smartphone or tablet) or their computer? In knowing this you will be able to choose the most appropriate channels for your marketing actions.
If you have an online shop, what’s your customers’ preferred delivery method? What’s their preferred means of payment? Here too, we can see the potential benefits that come from knowing these kinds of things. If you only offer PayPal and your customers do not like this means of payment, you know what you must do.

6- How Much Your Customers are Willing to Spend

This, of course, does not mean asking your customers about their salaries and how much they earn per month. Your customers would not appreciate it and it’s not very useful for you to know. No, what’s interesting is knowing how much your customers are willing to spend, what they can afford. Knowing this, you could rethink your pricing policy, but you could also target your marketing campaigns better as well as your offers according to your customers’ budgets.
To take a somewhat far-fetched but telling example: it’s not in your best interest to provide a customer with a £10,000 offer on a product if you know that the customers’ budget for this kind of product is £5,000.

7- What Your Customers Like in the Act of Buying

What satisfies your customers when they buy from you? Or even when they shop in general, be it from you or elsewhere? The knowledge of what makes your customers happy in the act of buying is the most sure-fire way to succeed in building loyalty. As we all know, customer satisfaction is the most important factor when building loyalty.
On the contrary, don’t hesitate to ask your customers what doesn’t satisfy them and what bothers them. Knowing what causes poor customer satisfaction is at least as interesting as knowing what causes customer satisfaction.

8- What Your Customers Want from You

Asking your customers what they expect from your company, the services they would like to see improved and the products they would like to see in your catalogue is all very relevant. This knowledge will allow you to improve your catalogue, your services and more generally your customer experience. Customers appreciate when you take their comments and suggestions into account, that you listen to them and pay attention to their requests.

9- What the Customer Thinks of Your Company

Following on from the previous point, it’s very useful to know what your customers think of you. Not only what they would like from you, but also their general opinion on your company, activity, products, services, etc. Ask them what they find positive about your company, but also what they find negative. This will allow you to improve upon negative aspects pointed out by your customers and reinforce what works and what appeals in your company.

10 – What Your Customers Think of Your Competitors

You are definitely not the only one in your industry. To differentiate yourself, keep your share of the market and gain more, you have to know what your customer base thinks of the competition, the companies with which you share the market. This customer knowledge will allow you to supplement and enrich your benchmarking process. And ultimately, to set yourselves apart from what other companies are doing.

Conclusion

As you’ve seen, you can benefit and learn a lot from your customers. To gain great customer knowledge, you must employ the use of specific tools such as surveys. Skeepers has developed a customer knowledge solution, based on an intelligent and highly targeted survey that collects and analyses customer feedback and opinions. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to find out more.