A Amplifica Digital received Pedro Ivo, who is a partner-director of Said CRM, a technology company specializing in CRM for retail, serving more than 200 medium and large retail brands in Brazil. In addition, the company helps these brands to get to know their customers better and relate to them in a more personalized way.
Customer retention is a constant concern for companies in various segments. It can be defined as keeping the customers your company has already won. In other words, it is to win the loyalty of these customers so that they become frequent buyers, forming a solid base of permanent customers.
As the name already suggests, customer retention is the process of keeping your customers doing business with your company as often as possible, without thinking about seeking solutions or goods from your competitors.
CRM is an acronym that stands for Customer Relationship Management, or customer relationship management. We wrote a text explaining the importance of integrating your CRM platform into your digital marketing strategy. Click here to access it!
Why integrate your CRM platform into your digital marketing strategy
What is the importance of CRM for Retail companies?
It is surprising that there are companies that still do not use CRM tools, the CRM mindset. There are few companies in Brazil that do a good job of knowing their customers. Only 2% of Brazilian companies have a 360° view of the consumer and cross-database for a better analysis of these profiles. Therefore, 98% do not have a complete view of who the consumer is.
Most companies have separate views, they know who the consumer of the e-commerce, the physical store or the application is, but they do not unify this data to obtain a single view of the customer who bought the e-commerce is the same one who bought it in the physical store. This type of data makes a total difference in knowing the customer, as this way you have the customer's points of contact and all interactions, being able to advance their interests. It is extremely important to know your customer and provide a personalized service for him.
Pedro Ivo shared with us the story of his grandmother's butcher:
“My grandmother is called Vanda and she is 97 years old. For over 50 years she has been buying meat from the same butcher here in Belo Horizonte, his name is Nelson. My grandmother used to go to Nelson's butcher shop every day, which was close to her house. There she talked with Nelson, bought meat, lunch was on the table at noon. In the 1990s, my grandmother had problems with both knees and had to wear a prosthesis that, due to medical error, had to be replaced. Finally, my grandmother was unable to walk. Nelson, at this point in the championship, had two options: the first was to lose the customer, the second was to do something and go to the customer. So he decided to call her every Monday at 8 am and ask how the weekend was, how the family was doing. Only afterwards would he offer the meat, and ask if he could deliver it. He makes the entire week's sale over the phone. At 09:30 am on Monday, the delivery was already made.”
After telling this story, Pedro Ivo drew attention to the fact that Nelson has neither the best nor the cheapest meat in Belo Horizonte, in addition to the only tools available being a pad of paper with customer information and a telephone number. But he knows his client and replicates over the phone that personalized service he offered in person. He calls the customer by name, has a personalized conversation and offers the right product. In addition to offering at the right time, Monday morning, another time like Monday afternoon, Pedro Ivo's grandmother would have solved the problem, as she needs to have lunch served for the family at noon.
This story shows that CRM depends more on mindset than technology. Technology comes in to provide that support for what is not possible (or takes a lot of work) to do manually. The Nelson in the story manages to do it manually because he has about 50 clients, but this service is more complicated for companies with thousands, millions of clients. If you want to maintain a level of knowledge about these people and a standard of communication, you need to use technology, as it will scale the work done manually by Nelson.
This whole story has a lot to do with the theme of the podcast: Customer retention in retail. A good shopping experience makes the customer loyal to your brand.
Eric Klein chats about customer retention with Pedro Ivo Martins
What does a retailer need to do to retain a customer?
Firstly, it is extremely important to know the customer not based on guesswork, but through data. Every company has an idea of who its customers are, but it is necessary to make a segmentation by age, gender, location.
Know your customer
Sometimes the company imagines that its customers are young people between 20 and 25 years old, from class A, but when an analysis is made with data it is seen that the customer is in the 60s and is from class C. The analysis with data is more reliable than a feeling. It is better to seek more concrete information than to make decisions based on guesses and perceptions. Thus, for those who want to work with customer retention, before creating a communication and relationship strategy, it is necessary to know who their customers are.
To do this, analyze the interaction points that this customer has with your brand: e-commerce, apps, physical stores, customer service system. Each customer interaction point with the brand is a source of information. Note this data:
Features data:
- name
- ID
- phone
- genre
- address
Purchase history data:
- What the customer has already bought
- How many times were purchases made
- What is the amount paid
- What was the payment method
- what was the size
- What color and collection
Unify all data and perform analysis from a single key. Your decisions should not be based on guesswork, but based on this data.
Choose communication channels
A person over 60 years old with an X profile is interested in a type of content and will have channels with which they will better understand the brand. Very different if it is a person from another profile. By understanding the profile, you will know which is the best channel to communicate with your client.
Have an after-sales strategy
Don't let the customer forget about you. Show that you care about his well-being and satisfaction, even after the purchase process. With a good after-sales strategy, you guarantee proximity to your consumer from the moment he takes his purchases home to the moment he returns to your store. Pedro Ivo shares a good shopping experience when he was still a teenager, and even today as an adult, he continues to be a store customer, thanks to the personalized service and dedicated post-purchase attention.
This one is just a summary of that chat. So you don't miss any details, listen to the episode on our podcast.
