Celebrating Get to Know Your Customer Day is more than showing appreciation

Customer engagement is a critical component of any sustainable business. Identifying what makes your customers happy and coming back for more contributes to your success. So it seems perfectly reasonable to set aside some time to get to know them and what makes them tick. It’s so reasonable, that there are four days a year set aside for National Get to Know Your Customer Day. Always falling on the third Thursday in January, April, July, and October this day is one small observance that can yield big results.

January 21 will be the first Get to Know your Customer Day of 2021, and there’s still time to make a plan to participate in a customer-centric activity of your choice. Depending on how deep you want to get and whether or not you want to initiate something that will be ongoing, here are a few suggestions to connect and understand your clients a little better.

●  Create a customer engagement strategy (if you don’t already have one): Start with creating a customer map, identify how they interact and behave, observe their behaviors, and offer a personalized experience.

●  Connect via social media: Running a promotion or contest that requires you to interact with your customers can be a great way to connect. Also, take some time to look at competitors on social media and what tools they use to reach their customers.

●  Website Analytics: This might be something you do regularly or have a specific person in charge of this. On the off chance you don’t, spending regular time looking into your web traffic and making notes of the trends you see will help inform how you continue to market your business. Already doing this? Delve a little deeper and invest in some new tools.

●  Establish live chat options and Chatbot for your website: Live chatbots work! They reduce the time it might take a customer to navigate your site for information. Establishing a quick connection to the customer and answering questions in real-time eliminates waiting around for someone to return an email that might be returned by your competitor sooner. The longer someone is poking or waiting around for you to respond, the more distracted they can become, and the next thing you know their search for private office space has landed them in looking up the ingredients needed for chicken piccata.

● Send out a survey: Survey data can be gold. But getting that data back is one of the biggest challenges. Surveys work much better if there’s a reward for the customer’s time. Throw in a coupon, discount code, chance to win a special offer, whatever feels right but make sure it’s something you can follow through with.

As with any research, utilize the information you glean while spending dedicated time on getting to know your customers, make a plan on how you evaluate your activity and document your findings. You never know how the data you collect today may come in handy later on. Speaking of later on, here are the 2021 dates for Get to Know Your Customer Day so you can pencil it into your plans and establish a deeper relationship with those who support you and your business.

January 21, 2021, April 15, 2021, July 15, 2021, October 21, 2021