Profile your customers in 10 intelligent and simple ways

What is profiling? Technically speaking, it is analyzing psychological and behavioral traits of a person. The data helps in determining capabilities of persons. Psychological profiling can be done by interacting with a person and for behavioral profiling; the person is to be observed with the help of information gathered from his close friends.

Here’s how you can do profiling in 10 simple ways:

• Interacting with customers
• Stay connected to their peers
• Observe their day-to-day activities
• Notice their interests
• Develop sources of information
• Keep personal details of customers
• Keep an eye over their spending
• Track customers all the time
• Notice their travel
• What your customers need

Let’s discuss the points in detail

Interact with customers as much as possible

Whenever you have an opportunity, you should interact with your customer to know what he does in free time like checking mails, spending time with family or self. Know about his native place, habits, likes and dislikes. Discuss what his future plans are and what he likes buying most.

Be in touch with the customer peers

Some information you can get only from peers of your customers. They will tell you about future plans of the customer, his behavior, financial status and present condition. The data can be helpful in determining spending power of customers and making strategies to target the customers.

Look at customers daily activities

See where the customer goes and the places he visits most and the people he meets. Information on daily activity of a customer can be drawn from reception and also from his close friends and colleagues. This information helps in understanding spending habit of customers.

Find out customer interests

Find out more about the customer. Find his places of interests, vacation spots and favorite food. Also collect information on his spending habit like whether he shops online of offline. If online, then know the sites he frequents and how he determines reliability of ecommerce sites like he relies more on online reputation of site or quality of products.

Collect information from every source

Sources that can give you customer information are:

• Family
• Acquaintances including friends and colleagues
• Reception
• Interaction with customer
• Competitors, if the customer is a businessman
• From clients of the customer

There could be more sources like noticing his hobbies but the above mentioned sources are more reliable.

Know about your customer personal details

Find personal details like age, likes, dislikes, birthday and wedding anniversary and also about how he celebrates his joy like in a specific hotel or at home with family members and friends. These details will help in making customized offers on special days like his birthday.

Enquire about where your customer spends

Ask the customer about his future plans like his savings, retirement, vacation and entertainment. Get details about his preferences like where he wants to spends and why. It is difficult to get future financial plans of a customer but you can do so during a friendly chit-chat over a cup of coffee.

Which location customer stays?

Location can help in determining personal choice of a customer. It is learnt that preferences change from one place to another. You can offer products or services customized according to location of the customer once you know where he lives.

Travel frequency

Track your customer to know how frequently he travels and places he visits and also note whether he visits a specific place or places again and again. If yes then then find out why. This information will help in understanding needs and in customizing offers in the long run.

What is customer requirement?

It is very important to know what a customer needs before you make any business offer like a discount coupon to the customer. Profiling information of a customer will help in understanding his needs and making interesting offers.

Hence I would like to say in conclusion

Keep all possible information about your customers and also maintain individual accounts of customers. Divide customers into different categories like location, spending power, likes and dislikes. When profiling is done, you can make customized offers for each customer depending on his profile. Repeat the process every six months as chances are that the customers will change their preferences. Follow these steps and take your business to new height of success.