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A Guide To Collecting Data For Business Growth
Businesses everywhere are constantly collecting data on their customers, using it for studies, understanding and business growth. With technology and the convenience of instant communication channels, an organisation’s ability to capture, analyse, and use data has never been better before. Having the sufficient amount of right data makes businesses much easier, giving organisations greater insight into what their customers and consumers want.
1. The importance of consumer data collection
For many businesses, consumer data is the key to their success. But how does data help in businesses? Data is important and great for getting to know customer’s interactions with different departments within a business from the beginning.
Customer experience is becoming a bigger deal with younger consumers who are willing to spend more in exchange for a better or an extraordinary experience. Customers are growing and getting used to businesses catering to their individualized needs with hassle-free shopping experiences, personalisation and Omni channel shopping platforms.
Data is the essential element to learn about customers, of what they want, where they make purchases, and even who they are. If a business chooses not to ‘hear their customers out’, consumers will eventually shop elsewhere, looking for a better replacement.
Marketing is way different than it once was. While personalisation is the key, marketing campaigns being stretched across multiple platforms largely increases product exposure, creating better and repeated product awareness. The more complete data an organisation has, the more accurate and successful their marketing campaigns will be as they will be able to know their target audiences better.
Data allows businesses to rethink and refine their marketing strategies to improve conversions and sales through personalisation and curated campaigns.
2. The importance of consumer data collection
There are multiple types of data to collect as the more detailed the data is, the more the business will be able to create loyal customers. The following shall be the primary types of data to be collected for any businesses
Contact details are essential to allow an organisation to communicate with its customers. Whether to introduce a new product or to get valuable feedback, it wouldn’t happen if there are no contact details for the business to connect with the customer.
As not everyone is willing to give out their personal details such as name, gender, age and address, this is one of the best data to be collected as this allows an organisation to accurately deliver the right message to the right group of target audience.
For instance, a customer’s name could be a good use in marketing to send personalised messages or email subjects. E-mails with a personalised subject line are more likely to be read than disposed before reading.
Gender, age and address could be used for future business planning. These statistics could determine your next new product, location of your next physical shop and more.
Getting customer experience data helps an organisation to understand how well their services and products are performing. This allows organisations to be informed of their services and products flaws (if any), dissatisfactions and room for improvement. They might also get brilliant suggestions from their customers too.
One of the best ways to obtain purchase decision data from customers is to ask them directly for their feedback. It is important to let the consumers know that the organisation values and appreciates their feedback for business upkeep and improvement.
Purchase decision data allows an organisation to get to know why the consumer buys its products whether it’s due to convenience, pricing, discounts, promotions, recommendations or so on. This will allow the organisation to refine their industry position and keep targeting the right group of people. To retain success, a business should always know why people buy from them instead of its competitor.
If a business doesn’t know how their customers discover them, they won’t be able to scale on an agreeable level. When they know how their customers are finding them, they can double down on their entry point and make themselves more visible to more people.
If a business is already running multiple marketing campaigns, it is even more important to know where their customers get to know them to measure the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. Sort out which platform or which type of exposure suits the business more.
Some customers come and go, but why? How inspiring if an organisation gets to know why their customers are leaving them. Churn happens to every business, but with the reason and data, the business can at least improve and innovate on the reasons of people churning.
If a certain account hasn’t logged in for a period of time, maybe it is time for a business to retarget that customer in an attempt to reduce churn.
However, an organisation can only do this with close supervision and the right tool to measure interactions. If there are such cases detected, all the organisation needs to do is send out an email to that group of people who hasn’t logged in for a while to ask why and let them respond instantly to prevent ignored mail.
3. How to Collect Customer Data
One of the biggest challenges that businesses face when collecting data is how to get the data? With more and more data scandals happening these few years, consumers are on their guard and becoming more vigilant in giving out their information.
Fortunately, there are a few soft methods to collect consumer data and here’s some of the best ones:
It is 2020 and most of the businesses already embrace intelligent business tools in some way such as online business operation platforms, POS systems, accounting systems and so on.
CheckNow, primarily serving as an online authentication platform, also provides a great feature to record customer’s data through QR code. It is one of the most polite and less intimidating ways to obtain a customer’s data. Check out more on CheckNow here.
One of the most common ways we see today for businesses to collect data is through a form, be it hard copy forms or online, to collect basic yet essential data. A membership would be the best reason for a customer to fill in the form. There onwards, the organisation can have the data as well as keep track of each transaction history for each account.
As mentioned above, feedback is important as it serves as a ‘wake-up call’ to many underperforming services and products. It is like a second chance to retain a customer and an opportunity to create loyal customers.
Most of the businesses that use feedback or surveys to obtain data offer an incentive to ensure people are willing to answer the questions. Be it a small discount code or free gift, this always does the trick until today.
If there is no suitable incentive to get people answering your survey form, an event or competition might be another good way to gather mass data. But be aware that the data requested from a survey form and competition may not be the same as competition may attract potential customers which have not experienced your product/ service to give feedback.
It is also very common to see online businesses run social media campaigns frequently to increase exposure and obtain data. One example is on Instagram by asking the followers to simply tag a friend, like that post and provide an email address to participate.
4. Data Protection
Last but not least, it is important for an organisation to implement legal customer data protection policy so that the customers know that their data is being protected and not misused. Transparency leads to confidence and trust from customers. It is best to seek advice from a legal firm to obtain a proper data protection policy as every organisation uses data differently.
As a conclusion, a business will be able to personalize its marketing strategy so that communication flows 2-way and engagement with customers goes up by collecting data. Collect the right set of data that will be needed, analyse it, use it wisely, and grow the business.
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A business continuity plan is vital for every business. It helps you to set out how you will prepare and respond as well as continuing your operations after the pandemic. Nothing should be more important to your business than to reduce the losses and minimise recovery time when a pandemic hits.
Being able to analyse and manage the threats posed by a pandemic is critical for your business survival. A business continuity plan can help you handle the impacts when a crisis hits. A comprehensive business continuity plan shall detail your business’s risk management strategies and business impact analysis. It shall describe how your business intends to respond to an incident, specification of a recovery plan and defined policies and procedures for managing staff and communication during the crisis.
As part of the planning process, you will need to:
- Identify your core services and what is needed to sustain the supply chain
- Identify arrangement for your employees such as telecommuting, cross-skilling & succession planning
- Develop a communication strategy for employees, customers and suppliers
- Protect the health & safety of your employees
- Consider your financial implications such as cash flow, cost increases and insurance
- Identify contingency plans for the unexpected events
- Schedule how the plan will be tested and updated.
Prevention: Risk Management planning
Risk management planning incorporates the prevention element that identifies, assess & develop strategies to manage risks.
1. ASSESS – The first step is to assess your critical business activities such as key services, resources, staff and things that could affect all of your critical business activities.
2. IDENTIFY – Identify where, when, why & how are these risks are likely to happen on a scale basis and its consequences. Here’s how to help you identify;
- Ask yourself if these risks are internal or external?
- Who might be involved or affected by these risks?
- Ask yourself ‘what if’ to find out more accurate answers
- Brainstorm with people from different department to get different perspectives
- Consider worst case scenarios to spot smaller risks part by part.
- Quick tip: Use mind map/ flow charts to develop a bigger vision and it’s easier for you to add answers easily
3. DEVELOP STRATEGIES – Develop potential strategies to avoid, reduce or transfer risks that you have identified by;
- Evaluating your risks – how severe are them and what are the actions can be taken to avoid and treat them?
- Draw out options to deal with unacceptable risks such as the method of treatment, people who are responsible for the treatment, costs involved, benefits of the treatment, the likelihood of success and ways to measure success.
- Avoid the risks when possible- you may choose not to proceed with the activity if risks are possible. Reduce the risks by having a QC, audit or staff training. Transfer the risks by shifting some responsibilities and cross-training staff, identify alternative suppliers, practice traditional ways of working and more…
- Adequate insurance for your business and staff might save you during a crisis.
Business Impact analysis (BIA)
While BIA is quite similar to risk management planning, a BIA helps to determine what most important activity for your business is and how long your business could stay afloat without these activities. To prepare a business impact analysis, you will need to identify;
- The resources needed to support each activity
- The impact of ceasing to perform these activities
- How long your business could cope without these activities
To identify these answers, here’s a few key questions that you can ask yourself’
- What are the daily activities conducted in each area of my business?
- What are the long-term/ ongoing activities performed by each area of my business?
- How important are these activities to my business? (on a scale basis)
- What are the potential losses if these business activities could not be performed?
- How long could each business activity be unavailable for (either completely/ partially) before my business would suffer?
- Do these activities depend on any outside products or services?
Incident response plan
An incident response plan should contain all the information you will need to respond immediately prior and after an incident/ crisis in terms of containment, control and minimising impacts. The following elements should be in your incident response plan;
- Business continuity plan activation
On the front section of your business continuity plan should include a clear statement of what circumstances should the plan be activated and also the details of the key person/ staff and their substitutes to authorise the activation of the plan.
- Incident response team
Identify and state the key responding persons and their roles handling the incident/ crisis as well as their substitutes.
- Communication plan
Plan the communication methods and timings needed to keep everyone safe while getting your business running in the event of an incident/crisis.
- Contact list
List down all your internal staff & their family member’s contact details, emergency services and external contacts such as your suppliers and clients.
Recovery plan
A recovery plan helps to pave the steps to take after the incident/ crisis to help your business operating again with minimal disruptions and shorter recovery times.
Time frame for recovery
- The time frame shall be realistic in order for your business to run normal again
- Create a time frame based on critical business activities in BIA
- Assign a recovery time objective to each critical business activity
- Develop recovery strategies
Prioritise critical business function
- Designate a recovery team (just like your incident response team)
- Review your emergency kit (shall include key documents that are essential for recovery) and contact list
- Maintain communication with your external parties such as suppliers and clients
- Identify alternative suppliers/ facilities and other equipment that can be used
Keep your business operating
- Prepare emergency cash flow or opt for internet banking
- Reduce costs if possible during the incident/ crisis
- Consider different business strategies or models. If going left leads to nowhere, then try going right.
- Consider doing business online (or at least let your business operations run remotely online)
Monitor recovery process
- Always keep your staff up-to-date on what’s going on and what is going to happen for your business
- Contact your insurer and see how well protected your business is
- Seek support for tax assistance, emotional and crisis support.
- Review your recovery process. Did it work and what did you learn from it
Business continuity plan maintenance – Test, evaluate and update schedule
- You should come up with strategies and a schedule for testing if your business continuity plan works out well enough to protect your business amid incidents/ crises.
- Set dates to review and update timetables, deadlines and information of your plan.
- Always keep a detailed revision history of your plan.
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