how to really get to know your customers

Every business owner knows that running a shop or operation or office is more than just providing products to the public. To make your business a success, it’s important to understand just who your customers are and what they want, as Harvard Business Review taps psychographics (measuring customers’ attitudes and interests) as being just as important as demographics in today’s business industry.
From gathering useful data to being more hands-on (not to be confused with overbearing), businesses can establish a more personable relationship with a customer base. In honor of “Get to Know Your Customers Day” on July 20, here are a number of ways to take a more customized approach to knowing your clientele better.

Forget About Assumptions
After a while some businesses, especially retail stores, tend to pool their customers into a general outline and begin assuming customer preferences and beliefs. This should be avoided. Tactics for providing great service and products may have worked well one season, but may not work well the next. By considering trends and customer data, businesses should be able to get to know their customers better and forget about generic assumptions.

Social Media
This may be beating a dead horse, but social media is always a great instrument to create and maintain effective relationships with customers new and old. Companies rely on data from social media to help them with targeting, bringing in ne customers and inspiring previous customers to keep coming in. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are just a handful of social media platforms that can be used to engage and interact with clientele and learn about their likes, dislikes and needs.

Create a Survey
Surveys can help to gather need-to-know information about customers. Encouraging customers to provide thoughtful insight and answers can really help a business to navigate through the need to update services. Try creating a survey that provides open-ended questions besides yes or no options. This will encourage the customers to get into the minutiae of their concerns and thoughts.

​Hold an Event
For businesses, especially retail businesses or health and fitness operations, that have a physical location, opening the doors to for an event can create a personable, face-to-face opportunity to get to know customers. This gives the company the ability to meet with customers and promote their products and services while also opening up the chance to interact and hear feedback. Providing this kind of hands-on event will help to create a true human experience for the customers.