7 ways data can help personalize your customer relations and drive your sales.

Data – the word alone is enough to make many people’s eyes glaze over. However, any business owner wishing to boost their profits and appeal to their customers cannot afford to miss out on the numerous advantages these sets of numbers and facts can offer your business. Take just a few minutes to think about the many ways these analytics can help you to take your business into the next decade.

1. Make more accurate forecasts.

At the heart of any modern business are inventory management tools. These come bundled with the many other payment and business operations features in your point of sale (POS) system and usually work in tandem with a barcode scanner.

To make this work for you, the first step is to use your barcode scanner to enter each of your products into your catalog. While the initial setup may seem somewhat time-consuming, it only needs to be done once. After that, the system will seamlessly update your inventory numbers whenever a product is sold, enabling you to keep an accurate tab in real time about everything you have.

That in turn transforms re-ordering from a combination of guesswork and hope into an exact science. Knowing how to use these tools effectively will drastically cut down on overstocking or running out of popular items. In the case of the former, you’ll save money when you only replenish popular products. In the latter, your customers will be pleased when they are able to buy exactly what they want when they come into the store or shop online. The result: More money in your pocket and happier consumers.

2. Learn about your customers.

Collecting and paying attention to data also allows you to better understand your buyers. Today’s smart POS systems are equipped to gather contact information and demographic details should shoppers volunteer them. Additionally, social media pages furnish visitors with a forum where they can share numerous facts about themselves that you can use to your and their advantage.

Birthday discounts are a frequently-used marketing tool that leverage demographic data. Simply by sending a coupon or promotion a few days before your customer’s birthday, you are doing two things. First, you are recognizing an important milestone in the person’s life and reaffirming your relationship with them. Second, you are providing a strong incentive for them to go to your store or website. More likely than not, that visit will result in a purchase that will pad your pockets while simultaneously making the customer feel good about your business.

3. Enhance the customer experience.

Completing a purchase transaction might seem to be your business’s main goal, but it goes much deeper than that. In fact, your focus should be to take your guests on a journey that begins when they browse through your online or in-store selection and continues long after they have tapped or swiped their credit card. The data you glean online, at your physical store, and via social media, can transcend from simple transactions into long-term relationships with your brand.

Website analytics provide a great deal of illumination that you can use to grow and refine your business. You can, for instance, learn a great deal about who is clicking away from your site and when it happens. It is possible to look at demographic information about registered guests to discover when they became disenchanted so that you can take steps to improve. Maybe your shipping or return policies are unclear. Perhaps your product pages are too cluttered or are disorganized. Whatever the issue, you only have the power to turn it around if you know that it is a problem in the first place. Data gives you that vital key.

Another valuable source of information is customer feedback, whether it comes from face-to-face contact, on your webpage, or through social media. No matter where you find it or how unpleasant it may be at times, acting on customer input is the very best way to improve. That is because it comes directly from the source. How you respond can even enable you to turn a negative into a positive!

Imagine, for example, that someone complains on social media that one of your sales associates was rude. Take this opportunity to publicly apologize on the site, an action that lets everyone see that you care about your guest and about resolving the situation. In addition, contact the customer privately to make amends, perhaps sweetening your “I’m sorry” with a free product or discount. Your prompt attention to the customer’s concerns may ultimately convert them from disgruntled to delighted.

4. Streamline your back-office processes.

If you devote all of your time and attention to the customer experience without dedicating similar focus to the behind-the-scenes running of your retail operation, your hard work may come to nothing. The good news is that here too data can be an invaluable tool. Using a smart payment system gives you access not only to the gold mine of customer details outlined above but also to numerous instruments that can make your day-to-day tasks flow smoothly.

Here are just a few of the capabilities you should consider:

• Employee management. Your system can keep track of numerous pieces of information, including schedules and vacations, who is succeeding, and who is struggling. Armed with these facts, you can then delegate tasks more efficiently according to sales ebbs and flows, reward associates who excel, and provide additional training for those who may be having difficulty.

• Financial management. Your payment system should easily integrate with your accounting software, making it easy to see your cash flow, profits, losses, expenses, and so forth. Gone forever are the days when you needed to pore over spreadsheets and receipts in an effort to stay on top of this vital back-office task. Your system can instantly pull sales, inventory, and customer data within seconds, in the process forming it into clear reports that you can use and  share with employees and stakeholders.

• Inventory management. The products you sell are the lifeblood of your business. It stands to reason that you want to understand as much as you can about your wares. When you use data to tell you that a particular item is flagging in sales, for instance, you can then investigate why this is the case. Perhaps it no longer meets a customer need and should be discontinued, but maybe it is not being prominently displayed. Or it could be that your images and textual descriptions leave something to be desired. Using data to its full effect will enable you to maximize sales and profits while giving customers what they want.

When you put your back office at the forefront of your business through the use of data, everyone wins.

5. Pinpoint your marketing campaigns.

It may sometimes feel like launching a marketing initiative is like playing catch in the dark. How can you possibly know if your efforts will reach the right people and make a difference? With the power of data on your side, much of the random nature of marketing can be eliminated. 

That is because you can harness it to appeal to an identified customer base. Utilize analytics to learn who wants your products, who is clicking on your website, and what other items or services your current customers would love. Selling to them then becomes less of a guessing game and more a way to throw a fastball down the middle into a catcher’s waiting glove.

6. Cut down on costs.

When you are spending money unnecessarily, it cuts into your profits, stifling your business and keeping you from meeting your customers’ changing needs. Data enables you to get a handle on the entire arc of your money: where it is coming in, how you are spending it, and in what ways it is trickling away.

Bad advertising campaigns, for example, can represent a huge drain on the finances of many businesses. To attract new customers, many throw good money after bad by relying on vendors or sales tactics that yield paltry results. When you use your smart payment system to create clear reports showing the trajectory of these campaigns, you can quickly recognize when the time has come to cut your losses and move on to a new strategy. Before you do, however, spend time looking through the numbers to see why the campaign may have failed so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes with the next one.

7. Adapt and grow.

With the power of data at your fingertips, you can make more accurate forecasts for your business. These projections can be indispensable as you plan the short- and long-term future of your store.

For instance, you can use analytics information to test the waters for selling your products in a new market. If the numbers suggest that there will be a strong demand and that potential buyers will respond to your brand, this may be the powerful incentive you need to widen your reach.

Data is more than boring numbers and lists of financial ups and downs. It is nothing less than the beating heart of your business. With it, you can attract, cultivate, and maintain your loyal customer base while simultaneously running a streamlined back office. If you are not already taking full advantage of these details, the time to leverage them is now.