I can not tell you over the last 16 years of operating this business, how many dealers have told me they don’t have the time or desire to get a customer’s full name, address and phone numbers when all they want to do is sell something and get them out the door. I’m going to try to give you a few reasons why you should always collect a customer’s data and a few ways to engage the customer in the collection of that data.

A few very important reasons why you should always have a customer’s data is being able to view purchase history, help them out if they lost a receipt and need to return a product, identify repeat customers quickly and automatically even though you might not have ever met them, help a wife out when she needs to purchase something for her husband’s birthday and doesn’t know exactly what type of unit he owns, allowing the customer to login to the system and check their own service tickets and sales history, aid in sales campaigns. I’m sure there are more reasons I’ve left out but that is a good start. The point is, there are many reasons why this information is important to have and it should always be collected.

So the most common reason I get for why it can’t be done? Time of course. So lets address time and see where it all falls in the big scheme of things. To do this, lets first take a look at the amount of time it takes to collect the data. The important data needs to first be identified and recognized: Phone Number, First and Last Name, Address and Zipcode. These are the core parts of any customer’s data that should be collected and stored. However, if you are not on board with all this yet, maybe you could eliminate the address and zipcode and only collect a name and phone number. This is better than nothing, and you can grow from there. Another key component that I’d like to add is an email address.

Email addresses are probably the handiest thing to have with Lizzy™ because she will automatically notify them on all sorts of occasions, such as special order parts arriving, service ticket completion, sending invoice copies electronically instead of constantly printing them, and allowing them to login, if you wish, to check their own accounts. All of this is automatic, free, and built into Lizzy’s™ everyday processes so why not take advantage of them?

To collect the above information from a customer might take you a total of 1 extra minute, and only the first time they arrive. Afterwards you only need their name to locate the record in question and place them on the invoice. So I’d have to say the argument of time really doesn’t hold up well if that truly is your excuse. Next, lets take a look at the second most used argument, which is: “The Customer Won’t Give It To Me”:

Collecting this information doesn’t need to be presented to the customer as a pain or problem. It needs to be presented as a cool new tool that you have that engages the customer at the point of sale. After all, we do want this person to return to our store don’t we? Lets start with their very first moment at the counter. Here are just a few examples of things you could do to make this a fun process that gets you the needed data and gets your customers something as well. How about a monthly contest where you randomly pull a person from a hat and give away a $25.00 gift card? People like free things and Lizzy actually comes complete with your random selection tool to quickly find a customer and give away the gift. This gives them a very good reason to participate and provide their information and gets people back in your store to buy things that might not have come back at all.

You should provide your sales counter people with a whole list of reasons why the customer’s information is important, not to you, but to them. Use a few of the ones mentioned above and make up your own as well. You don’t need a whole list, just a few to make your point. You need to start making this an important part of every sale. It also helps your employees to start remembering names of people that frequent your store and lets management recognize people that they might want to give discounts to since they come in so often. This can even be done from home at night while everyone else is sleeping..

So even though the General Customer type is available for you to use, I personally hope you never do.

–glenn hancock

Another example might be that I am writing a business system much like the one Lizzy™ already performs, but I don’t want to rewrite tax, invoicing and inventory control systems if there are already solutions I can borrow from. So I go to the Cloud and locate pieces written by others and integrate those solutions into my system so that I can come out with a complete system faster than I could on my own. The fact is, Cloud Computing means a lot of things to a lot of people. The question of what exactly is Cloud Computing, get as daunting as asking just where is the edge of a real Cloud?

Just like a real cloud in the sky, you can’t really touch its edges to see where it starts and stops, nor can you really define where the Cloud Computing model actually starts and ends. The farther we move into this model the fuzzier things get. I read articles daily where this company or that has adopted one model over another, or that this company has elected to create an internal Cloud instead of using the one growing amass on the Internet. The problem remains though, what really is a Cloud?

Salesforce.com uses the Cloud extensively in order to provide external modules to their CRM system. Instead of using the model that Nizex Inc adopted, where we integrate our own modules to insure that they all operate seamlessly together, they go to the Cloud to find pieces and then charge additional fees to integrate and keep those modules integrated together. They’re not alone in this practice as most companies today are taking up residency in the Cloud. It’s my belief though that trying to keep all of this unrelated code managed is going to prove more than the system can bare.

And then there is the obvious question (at least to me): If we continue to improve the management of the Cloud in order to insure that different modules are as tightly integrated as systems such as Lizzy&trade, will you still have a Cloud? Will the enforcement of integration and security rules relegate the Cloud to some glorified form of Research and Development that crosses company and personnel boundaries? Will the individuals creating these different pieces be happy taking orders from outside their worlds? And if we get to this point, will they be happy working for free while being treated as employees?

I have to agree that in concept the Cloud would seem a great thing, but in practice it brings me back to the big Internet boom of the 90’s. While people with more money than sense dropped millions into companies that had no sustainable business model, the rest of us continued to work on the things that made sense. Of course, they made more money short term and got lots of publicity in the process, but in the end, they’re gone and we’re still here. Will Cloud Computing follow a similar trajectory? I believe to some degree that it will. I think that eventually the buzz of the cool sounding term will loose its zeal and people will start to realize that they’re spending even more money trying to manage a beast than they did when they were doing it all internally. They’ll also wake up to realize they’ve lost control of their information in the process, with more and more external forces dictating exactly what they can and can’t do.

Can businesses really relegate all of their internal processes to the Internet and still maintain the level of control they need more than ever to succeed? I believe we’ve reached an important turning point in the life of development. I’ve worked for years handling the development processes for a couple different companies, all the while doing things much differently than other companies, and in some turns, being looked down on for not doing what everyone else was doing. Now I read articles where the big turn in development is to do exactly what we’ve been doing for years. Now I’m watching the Cloud gaining more and more steam and wondering if it’s really the answer, or just another cool sounding slogan that too many are falling victim to.

So it’s a terrible thing for these company executives to ignore Facebook and Linkedin? I tried to join linkedin as I’d never heard of it before I read this article. While I’m still not sure of exactly what Linkedin does for me as a business owner, I can tell you that I’ll most likely never use it due to it not working very well. For the last 5 minutes the site has been sitting here spinning just trying to register my name.

As for Facebook, it’s a great website for catching up with friends and chewing the rug, but it’s real usefulness to a business owner is questionable at best. Can you find customers on it? Do people actually go to Facebook and ask others what they know of Lizzy and Nizex Inc.? Do they spend time researching how to best run their companies? Or heck, how many are actual business owners to begin with? To give merit to these sites as some sort of wonderful untapped sales tool seems weak at best. Before you can tell me I should have a facebook account for my business, you should first explain to me how having a facebook account is going to increase sales or support and by how much.

Again, I’m not against Facebook and I’m not sure what Linkedin even is since it’s still sitting here spinning its wheels just trying to get me registered, but to suggest that my business is in jeopardy just because I don’t have a linkedin account seems to me a survey done by someone that has never herself run a real business. Oh, and the company executives that she suggests she surveyed? Well, it seems she didn’t actually speak with any of them and they run companies so large that I doubt their using Facebook ever enters into their minds.

Companies these days face an information overload like none before them. There is information coming from every conceivable direction, and managing that information in a timely and efficient manor, is a major concern to those of us strapped with the responsibility of keeping things moving forward. The question, and most important part of any good managers job, is which piece of information is the most important and which can we do without? Do we need a full blown social media site in order to better communicate with our employees, or does giving them access to such a system take away from what they’re actually getting paid to do? Will we reach a point of critical mass where upon, we all have so many social media sites that we need to communicate on that we end up ignoring most of them completely?

When the Internet got started, people started trying to figure out how we could talk to each other about things we were interested in. How could we get help with a problem by those having similar problems? During this time, Forums and email lists were setup to handle these concerns. We could simply join a forum we were interested in, help people out, discuss topics of interest, and actually get help if need be. These forums are still in heavy use today, but honestly, I’m a member of so many forums that I couldn’t possibly tell you which I’ve used in the past. You tend to become numb over the whole thing and resign to using them to find answers to problems instead of sitting and talking all day.

In my mind, social media sites are even worse. Yes, don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to catch up with all your old school mates or long lost loves, but in reality that’s about all they’re good for. The groups of people you let into your little world are so unrelated and mixed that carrying on any lengthly conversation with anyone or getting answers to some specific problem are all but non existent. They really end up being more of a gossip channel than anything of real substance.

So you ask, what’s the point in this article if they serve no use? Well, I didn’t really say they served no use, I said that implementing one in the hopes of gaining valuable information for your own business seems a waste of time. A better use of a social media site and I’ll use twitter as an example, is that knowing it exists, and joining it, may gain you valuable information you might not otherwise be privy to.

Lets say you have a product called ABC Gel and you want to find out if anyone is talking about it. Join twitter, install a program like TweetDeck and setup a custom search on keywords that might capture comments about your product or services. Perhaps most will be from your own company but eventually it may yield results. Perhaps happy customers rave about your product, perhaps ones you thought were happy talk badly about it. Either way it’s good information to have. So while I’m against actually implementing a social media site within your own company, I do believe in using the existing sites to better position for success.

A good CRM system will aid not only in collecting this data, but also in utilizing it to its full potential. Before you rush out and start logging data though, make sure your system allows for keeping data broken apart in meaningful ways. Data collected into a word document is much less useful than data broken into easily searchable pieces. Reports can be written, stripping large text bodies apart into meaningful results, not so easy.

Lastly, you need to develop a plan before you start. Like what information would be really nice to have? What information do we currently collect that really serves no purpose. Then, once you have a list of criteria, design how you’d like to break that information apart to somehow glean that little something extra from the otherwise unimaginable amount of data. This is probably one of the most important steps and probably the least paid attention.

So use Social Media sites as much as you can but I’d hold off a while on trying to create your own corporate versions.