My clients pride themselves on their customer service, it’s one of their core beliefs. Little do they know that their customer service information can be used to inform, create, streamline, and differentiate their business; giving them a competitive edge.

What customer service information can be used?

Good, bad, or indifferent our interactions with our customers and the service we provide gives us a lot of data we can use to succeed. Let’s take a look at some of the information you’ve got and how you can use it.

Customer demographics

Let’s start with who they are and where they are. Your customer demographics, age, gender, location will tell you some good information about where they are in their life and where you will find them. You can use this information to easily target marketing as people like to live and hang out with people similar to themselves. You could target mail or social media marketing based on where your customers live to help you gain more customers.

Looking at other information, such as gender and/or age you can niche your marketing further to save yourself money and help attract a more aligned client.

One of the best customer service planning tools to do this is your website pixels, Facebook or Google, and their analytics. Both Facebook and Google allow you to retarget and find more clients like those who have already been, loved, booked, or bought through your website. Best of all is that using this information reduces your ad cost considerably.

Customer notes

marketing without data customer service information Dan Zarrella quoteThe notes you take when a client first contacts you can give you a lot of information into not just what they want from you but what made them act on it. One of the favourite questions I’ve been taught but wished I used more often, is “why me and why now”. This customer service information tells us what it was about you or your business above all the others they’ve seen and what made them make that decision now.  Over time you will be able to inform where to put marketing efforts if it was a platform they keep saying they saw you on; or target your message if there’s a theme to why they’ve acted now. There’s much power in striking while the iron is hot.

A little while ago, I went through my client notes and wrote down all of the issues people had come to me with. I could see trends and gaps. I’ve already used this information to help change some of my marketing and I will use it when I go on to plan my next 12 months of marketing. I’ve also taken this information to refine my services and introduce new products and offers. Your customer notes hold a wealth of information on what your clients actually want vs what they say they want, or worse, what you think they want.

The benefit of using their notes is that you’re often directly repeating what motivates them to take action back to them and this is key to engaging social media content.

Customer testimonials

I admit to having a template for my testimonials, I find that while most people are willing, many don’t know what to say. Things like, “what had they tried before” or “ how was our business different” or “how did they feel after working with our business” all gives us customer service information we can use, especially in our marketing. This information tells us what our point of difference is and can help us write content for social media and our website.

Customer complaints

I bet this is where your thoughts first went, I know mine did when I started thinking about this blog on how customer service information can be used. What we can do better gives us the opportunity to improve, so long as we’re open to hearing the feedback in the first place.

While I understand that some people just complain and there’s just no pleasing others, perhaps with some better questioning at the start or expectation setting you might have been able to ‘weed out’ or redirect those clients you’d rather not work with. There is plenty of work out there and you don’t have to take every client. In fact, it’s better for you, your business, and often that client if you don’t take their work.

Even if their complaints are truthful, we can always improve. I’ve developed this free checklist of 20 ways to deliver exceptional customer service.

How customer service information can be used

customer service information quote Max LevchinI’ve addressed how you can use your customer service information as I’ve addressed the types of information you would be gathering. The key is to remember that while the content is written about your business, it’s actually about your client. This is the power of using customer service information. It’s your client’s experience of your business.

Use this information, in their words, from their perspective to speak to others just like them. Use it to find more clients through their demographics. Use their words in your marketing, be it on social media, in emails, or on your website.

Repeating information back to a client makes them feel heard and validated, it gives them a sense of belonging. All of these are basic human needs and things we need to start and build lasting relationships. As business owners we should be looking to long-lasting relationships as the cost and time it takes to acquire a new customer can be quite great.

The customer service information we gather provides us with a window into what drives our customers to work with us and then we can repeat this to gain more clients and grow our business. You can read more about what drives your customers to take action in this fundamentals blog post.

Free Resources you can use your customer service information in:

Facebook Marketing: https://www.karalambert.com/organic-facebook-course/

Exceptional customer service checklist: https://www.karalambert.com/business/exceptional-customer-service-free-checklist

Define your selling point: https://www.karalambert.com/business/point-difference-selling-point/

Understand what motivates people: https://www.karalambert.com/study/motivators/

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