Are you tracking customer details correctly? Here’s how you should do it 

As a retailer, there are all kinds of things you need to be keeping track of on a daily basis in order to be successful in your business and grow. Customer details are one of the most important pieces of information you’ll need to track and organise. By tracking your customer’s details, you will be getting to know them, their habits, and their interests, which helps you to give them exactly what they want.

So how do you know if you’re tracking customer details correctly? Are you tracking the right information or are you missing key details? And what’s the best way to go about customer tracking? Let’s take a closer look.

Build customer profiles

The whole point of building a customer profile is that it allows you to get to know who your customers are. This information can help you to make decisions on inventory, pricing, promotions, and much more. It can even help you shape your brand. If you don’t know who you are selling to, how can you possibly attempt to meet their needs and wants?

Unfortunately, building customer profiles is not always an easy task. Getting feedback from your customers can be tricky at best. You may want to make use of your social media accounts to engage with them or even set up a survey to get much-needed feedback and information. When using social media, ensure you utilise the right platforms. For example, there is no point in spending all of your time on Instagram if your target audience is primarily using Facebook. Conduct some market research beforehand.

It’s important to keep in mind, however, that gathering the details is only half the battle. You then need a way to organise, track, and make sense of the details.

Don’t tackle the job yourself

One of the best pieces of advice for retailers is not to try tracking these customer details on their own. Today retailers can use EPOS software that is highly sophisticated and can track all the important customer details for you. You won’t have to worry about what to collect and what not to collect; nor will you have to remember to do it.

Take a look at Vend, which is the leader in EPOS systems in the UK. Vend is absolutely packed full of helpful tools and features, but when it comes to tracking customer details, that’s the job of the Vend Display feature. This feature works to take all the customer details while they are actually being served. It doesn’t get easier than that. Customers aren’t being put out, meanwhile, you’re getting the key information you need. For a quick tour of the Vend point of sale system, look here.

Use the information to your advantage

Now that you’ve got the customer details, and the information is organised, you can then use this information to make future decisions on inventory, pricing, promotions, how and where you plan to advertise, who your target market is, where you may be falling behind, and so much more. This will put you at a significant advantage as instead of making assumptions and guessing what’s going to work, you can use the information that you’ve gathered to make an informed decision.

While it may not sound like a big deal to track your customer details, the fact is that this is a very involved process that should be collecting all kinds of key metrics. This information will help you to shape your retail business and determine how successful you’ll be.