One of the pivotal factors of CRM is gaining insight into your customer’s behavior; what they think about your brand, your products and services, and how they want you to improve in the future to be loyal to you.
The trick is to focus on CRM, but also include CXM principles into your CRM strategy to gain a full understanding of your customer. While CRM focuses on gathering information about the customer, what you need to do with the data is extract useful information on how to market, engage and convert your customer.
Actionable insights are basically focused on using this data and information to enhance the customer experience, and enhance the relationship between your brand and them. For insights to be actionable, you must be able to gather them and actually do something about them. So, how do you do this? We took a look at how you, as a brand, can transform your customers’ feedback into insights that you can action.
Create Surveys For Your Customer Base
One of the first surveys that most companies turn to when finding out about the customer experience is “Tell Us What You Thought”. Rate-Us campaigns are a great way of finding out whether you are on the right track when it comes to your products, services, and the way you engage with your customer.
Did the package reach you on time? How was it dealing with our staff? Did you find the process easy and streamlined? What can we improve on? These kinds of questions are simple and easy to answer, and if there was a problem with one of the processes or interactions, it is very simple for your customer to let you know that there was one.
The problem with surveys is the fact that they could seem somewhat skewed due to the fact that customers will usually only complete surveys if something was wrong. So, consider incentivizing surveys and from there, pick out what was streamlined and smooth about the transaction and what can be improved on.
Focus on Reviews
Although surveys are great to check in with your customers and find out what they think of your brand, the thing is that they can be really limited. The problem with surveys is that they are based on things already known and assumptions already in place. So, when you are writing a survey for your customers, you are putting information together that you are predetermining for your customer, and pre-setting their conceptions. So, the value of the actual information can be really limited.
Customer reviews, on the other hand, especially on your site or those sent to you of your products and services are usually a lot more authentic. You are usually able to gather a lot more data and information about how you are doing through unprompted and authentic feedback from your customer. This provides you with a lot more actionable information that you can take on board and actually work with.
When your customer actually tells you what is wrong, right, or what needs improvement with your products and services, you are then able to fix it yourself if the information is valuable. Encourage your customer to leave reviews on your site so that you can ascertain, from the horse’s mouth, what you need to do to improve for future customers.
Pay Attention to Social Media
Many customers turn to social media to talk about their experiences with the brands that they encounter. They might use it as a platform to air frustrations or warn other potential customers about a brand. But, they could also be using it as a platform to promote and recommend certain brands. So, keep an eye on social media, especially your profiles, as well as your competitors!
Social media will also give you an insight into various trends and conversations in your industry. Use it as a tool to know what customers are searching for, what they are saying, what they are wanting and how the conversations are being angled.
With this information, you can either add products or services to your brand offering or change certain processes to make it more accessible for the customers. Information is readily available on social media, you simply need to spend time shifting through it to get an idea of what your customers are wanting and what you should be doing to reach them.
The Bottom Line
Gathering insights into your customer is one thing, but actually actioning them is another. The key thing is to remember, not all insights can be actionable. Spend time gathering information to get a general idea of what your group of customers is saying. From there, put your strategies into action and adjust your products or processes accordingly.
