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Today is the first quarterly “Get to Know your Customers Day” of 2023, and probably the most important one. Whatever plans you have for your business throughout the next year will depend on knowing your existing customers as well as possible.
As a successful business owner, you know how important it is to know your customer profile like the back of your hand. But how well do you know your repeat customers and clients? These are the people who make up the majority of your business and ensure its continuing success.
Finding out More About your Clients
You don’t need to be obvious about it, but you can find out a lot about your clients by how they book appointments with you. You can also find out more after they have used your services. There must be something that keeps them coming back.
At this point, I’m not talking about demographic identifiers but the little things that make people unique. Discovering and remembering these little things can be the key to making your client feel important to you. Not just as a client but as a human being. Being seen and understood makes everyone feel good.
Discovery Channels for your Clients
So how can you discover more about your clients without grilling them throughout their appointment?
There are a few ways you can be surreptitious in your data collection and get to know your clients.
- Frame personal questions in a way that will improve your service provision.
- Do you have something you hate
- Are you allergic/have poor reactions to…, are you Vegetarian/Vegan,
- Ask for feedback, and be specific in your request.
- When you ask for feedback, be specific about what you would like clients to address. It will make it easier for them to answer, and you will learn something about your clients.
- Send regular client surveys
- you can filter your clients by those who have had two or more services in the past 3-6 months
- Those who have purchased products in the past six months
- Mix up the survey themes to prevent duplicating information.
Use SimplyBook.me Tools to Know Your Customers
You can use features within the SimplyBook.me system to get to know your customers.
Client Fields/Client Login
When you use client login to create a dedicated account for each customer, you can enable the client fields feature, which will let you ask pertinent questions about them that might impact their service with you. By enabling Client Fields there, you can collect general information related to your clients to get to know them better.
Intake Forms
You don’t need to enable client login to use Intake Forms, which will allow you to gather “important” booking-related data. This can be very important when dealing with personal or intimate services. Asking specific questions about allergies, dislikes, and contra-indicative medical information is essential. A person asking for a pedicure might not think that being diabetic is important, but a professional knows that it is. You also know not to offer them a sugar-laden bonbon.
Document Upload
Sometimes you need to request document upload from your clients. Almost invariably, there is more information there than you actually need – put it to good use and get to know them better.
Client reports
Using the reports available in your interface, you can see booking behaviour. So you can see when specific clients tend to book a session and also what service they book most often.
For example, you could send a voucher for a service they have never used but would complement the ones that they do use.
Feedback Report & Reviews
If you are using the feedback request feature, you can see reviews your clients have, so you can make sure that if there is something that they were not happy with, you will improve it next time. Also, you can reply to the reviews, strengthening the client relationship further.
Facebook Login & Client Info
Using the client login feature, you can enable your clients to use Facebook to log in. By doing this, you will also see the Facebook profile data associated with the client. So you can see their photo, making it easier to greet them properly when they walk into the door – but only if it’s their face and not that of their favourite pet.
Make it More Sociable
If you want to know your clients better, you can always invite them to an event. Mid-summer, Christmas, New Year, Halloween, and Easter, are just a few occasions when you can fuse a fun holiday with a client data collection event. Alternatively, you could host a cocktail party on “Get to know your customer” day every quarter. Conveniently, it’s always on a Friday. The best part about this is that you can also use it as a marketing event and invite them to bring a friend who might benefit from your services.
Know your business, Know your Client – Attract More
However you choose to get to know your customers and clients, every client you learn about will broaden your understanding of your target demographics. Every new piece of data will add depth to your client personas, making it easier to create marketing campaigns to attract more of the same.
As your customer profile accumulates more data, you can use it to diversify your service provision, get rid of non-performing services, and tailor your business for the best return.
And the added benefit is that your clients will feel important to you when you make them feel understood and seen.