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Why Up to the Minute Data on Your Customers is Vital… and Possible

Mobile devices are here to stay. Using them to keep your finger on the pulse of customers, employees, and even partners and suppliers is a savvy business decision. The information you collect is invaluable.

Suddenly, you can harness the multitudes of opportunities to collect customer and competitive data. Accurate, up-to-the-minute data can mean the difference between running your business in a highly targeted way and falling far from the mark. The best part is arming yourself with this intel doesn’t require a significant, if any, investment in powerful computers, POS hardware or complicated software. Almost every one of your customers walks into your establishment carrying the only thing you need to collect the insights you can use to make savvy business decisions: their mobile devices.

Compel everyone who interacts with your business to pull out their smartphones or tablets. How? Offer them an incentive to take a quick, fun, interactive mobile survey. They’ll earn a percentage off or a chance at a prize, and you’ll collect information you can’t really get otherwise. You’ll be building a database and getting real-time feedback from customers. Here’s how:

1. Polling customer satisfaction isn’t new.

But if you’re asking via online surveys, you’re limiting your potential to learn. Not only do you probably not have everyone’s email, but you can’t control whether you end up in their junk folder or even if they’ll answer. Ask customers at checkout to touch and swipe about their experience on their smartphone or the tablet you can use at point of purchase. In less than a minute, you can learn detailed information that you can put to use on the very next customer. Wording on in-store signage confusing? Are parts of your store off-putting to your customers? Are your products being displayed in logical ways? By asking for customer feedback in the store, you can learn specific insights about issues you can rectify immediately.

2. Monitor your marketing.

You spend good money advertising your business. Are your promotions appealing? How about pricing? How do you compare with local or online options? What compelled your customer to come in? Ask them! You can survey them about their visit, but you can also use a mobile survey to learn about the factors that brought them in. In a few questions, customers will be more than happy to provide the insights you seek. Making it effortless by using their device or yours lowers the barrier even further.

3. Create a brand community.

Combine themed quiz questions with some survey questions. Entertain them, and let them win something.

Engage and assess employees via their mobile devices

You can see how little effort you need to get feedback from customers; do the same with your employees. Ever wonder if the employee training you invest in is paying off? Do new hires understand the importance of personal hygiene outlined in their training materials? Are all employees adept at handling the occasional unhappy customer in front of other customers? There’s no time like the present to find out! Give them all a quick quiz before the shift starts. They can use their own phones, their answers can be anonymous, and you’ll know instantly if one of them needs additional training before they deliver an unfortunate customer interaction or shopping experience. Use the quiz results to alter training materials for the next time.

Entertain the kids

Maybe your customers would linger longer—and spend more—if their kids were entertained while in your store. But maybe you don’t have to space or budget to create a kid-only area. Chances are, though, that the kids, or certainly their parents, have a mobile device. Adding a few tablets on kiosks can also attract kids’ attention, so parents can spend more quality time in your store. Create a just-for-kids mobile quiz. It can be purely for fun, or if you can gather any insights from their kids about your customers, a mobile quiz is a great way! After all, if the kid wins a prize, you might need a parent’s email or physical address to deliver the prize. Voila! A database is born!

Go mobile in minutes

Creating a mobile survey or quiz is drag-and-drop simple and can be done by someone with no experience in a matter of minutes. And updating it at any time is just as easy.

Modern mobile quizzes and surveys reside on the internet, so there’s no app for anyone to install. That means anyone can take your survey or quiz simply by scanning its QR code or by entering its unique URL into their device’s browser. When they’re done taking your short quiz—branded with your store’s logo and graphic elements—they hit ‘finish,’ and they’re back to doing what they were doing before.

You’ll have a growing, password-protected database of customer and employee data that you can use to better manage all aspects of your retail store. Every business owner today should be harnessing the power of the vast amounts of data available.

Dozens of powerful computers make their way into your business every day. Harness mobile surveys and quizzes to learn important insights and gain an exponential return on the small time investment you make to create them.

You’re running your business in the information age. Embrace it; it’s transformative.

 

Contributed by Mark Penson, CMO of Survey Anyplace (www.surveyanyplace.com), an app-free mobile survey tool customized for gamification, allowing retailers to get real-time insights from their customers, allowing for immediate action and reaction.


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