When it comes to customer service and sales the most important asset you have is the feedback from your clientele. This is validated in not only the reviews you receive online, but also in the types of questions and concerns they voice during the sale. By actively listening to their perspective you can, in turn, discern actionable strategies for your marketing and sales process. As Marketers we are often pulling at our clients for this type of insight, who is coming in, what features or services are they using or talking about, is their anything they would like to see? Unfortunately, the sales staff is often so focused on closing the deal that they skip this important last step in the sales process, turning the current sale into a future sale.   

Questions You Should Be Asking Your Customers

 How are they finding you? When you have a customer walk into your store or fill out an order from online do you know what marketing medium brought them to you? If it was a social post, paid ad, or a search engine result do you know where your marketing dollars are having the greatest pull? Attribution of the sale is still hard to define by the the data and metrics we can pull from sources like Google Analytics and Search Console, but you have the answer quite often right in front of you. By simply asking the customer at the end of the sale , “So how did you find us?”, or, “So what brought you in today?”  you can find out what made your store or site the one they ultimately chose to do business with. These two simple questions can open up an invaluable resource for your marketing team to take that information and push it into their strategy to capitalize on your in-market shoppers actual concerns and wishes.   

It doesn’t end with just how they found you, you can also inquire to why they chose to purchase from you vs a competitor, what additional products or services they would like to see in the future, or what caused them to switch to you from another company. It is amazing how often we ignore this opportunity to analyze what is essentially a built-in customer survey at the point of the sale. Reviews are important, positive ones validate your company to other potential customers, and negative reviews allow you the chance to improve, but how often are you making actual steps to improve and or grow from this feedback?

Remember, you have to sell yourself before you sell any product or service so by engaging in open transparent conversation with your clientele and then showing them that you are taking their opinions seriously and making moves to answer their requests you will transform them form a one-time sale to a lifetime customer. Selling a product someone needs is easy, proving that they need to buy it from you to have the best experience and result is the hard part. So I’ll ask you this, are you listening?