Collecting customer details without conflict
Sat, Nov 6 2004
Something I've said many times is that a major key in business is to maintain regular contact with customers. Too often we only have fleeting contact with each customer during the pre-sales process, then again at the time of the actual sale, and perhaps shortly afterwards if there are problems. Then they disappear into the wide blue yonder never to be seen again.
No matter what sort of business you are in your absolute number 1 priority should be to make sure you get contact details for everyone you deal with as well as permission to make contact with them again in the future.
Of course with some types of business that's easy: if you run an accounting business or a video library it's just expected that all your customers will provide you their contact details, but if you run a bike shop or a supermarket it could be a bit more difficult. There are relatively simple things you can do though, such as run a monthly prize draw with entry forms displayed at the register, or ask customers to sign up for a product warranty. If you provide a positive incentive most people will be happy to give you contact details.
Note that I said *positive* incentive, though! Be careful not to use what I call the "negative disincentive" approach: don't create friction for people who do not want to provide you with their details. It sounds really obvious and silly but I'm surprised how many retailers have the correct idea that they need to collect customer contact details, but then go about it the wrong way and create friction at the point of sale just when someone is trying to hand over some money.
Too often customers are made to feel uncomfortable because they don't really want to provide personal details to the shop assistant, but don't know how to say so in a polite way. The assistant rings up the sale, tells the customer the price, then asks them for their name and address. The customer is put on the spot and feels railroaded into providing everything from their shoe size to their blood type.
Is that method effective? Definitely. Most people will give in and provide their details so the customer contact database will grow quickly.
Is it a good approach? Definitely not. *Don't* put friction into the sales process! No matter how important it is to build up your contact database it's critical that you don't make customers feel they've been pressured to reveal anything.
Ideally you need to ask for their contact details in a way that makes them *want* to give them to you, such as with an entry form for a competition or in exchange for a service that provides real value to them. If you can offer something with value in exchange for contact details you can turn a potentially negative experience for your customers into a positive one while simultaneously building up your contact database for follow-up direct marketing.
The ultimate level that you should strive to reach is a situation where customers not only want to provide you with contact details, but they want to sign up all their family and friends too! A good approach to achieve this is to do something like run a "referral bonus" program where existing customers get discounts for bringing in new business, or a competition where people are only allowed to enter once each. The natural thing for customers to do in that situation is to enter themselves and then also enter all their family and friends.
There are lots of other ways you can encourage customers to provide you with their contact details, and if you have any examples or stories about good (or bad) experiences with customer data collection I'd love to hear them.
The next step of course is a question of what to do with customer details once you've collected them, but that can be a topic for a future story.