The mantra ‘know your customer’ cannot be stressed enough, but demanding too much information too soon is fast becoming a taboo.

Short-term Strategies

Many company strategies for collecting customer information are based on a short-term plan, with the aim of capturing customer data as quickly as possible. This is often conducted with the best intentions, eager to know who their customers are so they can serve them better. However, this strategy can have a very negative impact on your customer’s perception of your business, as the data collection process does not necessarily appear to benefit them in performing the task at hand, which is quite often purchasing, registering or making contact. When this data collection is made mandatory within one of these processes, it will also generates a higher percentage of false or null data.

Take it slowly

Patient and passive data collation is key to generating accurate customer information and avoids undermining your relationship with them. A long-term strategy to develop valuable CRM data should be established, but also planned for. The data has more value due to its credibility but takes many years to collect. A combination of incentivised short-term strategies, where the customer can see an immediate gain to providing information and a long-term strategy should be adopted.

As I find time, I will build upon this for a more in depth article.

Other Data Capture Uses

Capturing and analysing staff behavior patterns and activity on the Content Managed System (CMS) can be very beneficial. Content Managed Systems can simply be deployed and forgotten. Analysing staff behaviour and evolving the CMS to speed up common tasks can save manhours and money. Further to this, companies with heavy internet traffic at peak times can cause poor system performance, leading to frustration when trying to perform essential administrative tasks. Knowing when data intensive tasks are performed and by who enables you to minimise these disruptions.