Decades ago towns were small and communities were extremely close knit.  Social interactions were key to good business. The local grocer personally knew every family in town. He knew their likes, dislikes, needs and preferences and this gave him insight into making good business decisions. Intimate understanding of his customers is what made him a successful businessman. Over the years, the nature of conducting business has changed, but it still holds true that the key to good business is a keen understanding of your customer. Companies don’t just look for buyers anymore but are motivated to build communities and engage with them consistently to earn their loyalty. Companies are steering away from cold emails and phone calls and depending on social selling to scout and engage with prospective clients.

As ‘understanding of your customer’ takes center stage, the platforms we use to reach out to these customers play a very vital role. It’s important that the platforms are not just statically performing their “task” but also double as dynamic data capturing and assessing tools. Here are a three ways to ensure you have a dynamic platform that is feeding your customer insights.

Capturing Customer Data

 Whether you run a portal, a product or an app, it’s important that your platform is customized to capture customer touch points, customer responses and their engagement styles and cycles. Your platform should be able to collect user data like traffic , transaction volume and  trace user experience i.e. how (Channel) and where your customers engage with your platform.  Capturing the ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘what’ of your user behavior will help you make informed decisions while crafting your sales and marketing strategies.

Social listening & Sharing

Your digital platform should be empowered to undertake social listening and social sharing. If there is something that is being said about your brand in your online community or anywhere out there on the internet, it’s important that your platform is able to capture that content and analyze it for you. Not just that, it should be well integrated with your social media allowing you to engage in conversations and share content easily with your community. Social listening is also a great way to do primary research and capture feedback from your customers. It is also helpful in scouting competition to   see what their users have to say about them.

 All- inclusive  

The online consumer behavior and social data thus captured is worth its weight in gold if utilized to constantly improve your ‘Products and Services’ and launch precise & targeted campaigns. Therefore, your platform should have all the right tools needed to engage your customer at any point of their journey. Whether its CRM to organize your customer data and  content curation or marketing automation tools to set the right hooks for your customer, your platform should be dynamic enough to incorporate them all.

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