Gaining a lot of customer data is always tricky, especially once you start factoring in the customer experience that needs to be maintained. The tempting thing to do is to ask customers to fill out long forms during the checkout process, but this isn’t the best way to go. In fact, over 80% of dropped carts are caused by the checkout process being too complicated.

You still need to know your customers. In some cases, verifying the customers’ identity is a necessity rather than an option. So, what is the best way to gain more insights about the customers without ruining customer experience? We are going to review some of the strategies you can incorporate in this article.

Follow-Up Emails

Automated emails are now easy to manage thanks to better, more advanced email marketing tools and platforms. Emails are actually the best way to continue engaging your customers after they have made their initial purchase. It is also an effective way to learn more about your customers.

Rather than making the checkout process longer, send follow-up emails and persuade customers to tell you more about themselves in a gradual and seamless process. You can use follow-up emails to ask for preferences and other details in exchange for special offers and discounts.

The follow-up emails can then be tailored based on the initial purchase made by individual customers. This will crank the effectiveness level of the emails all the way to 11, which means you will be able to learn a lot about them without ruining the customer experience.

Use Other Sources

Another approach worth considering is using third-party services and other sources of information to fill in the gaps and to get to know the customers better. Social login is actually a good way to get started. Rather than asking customers to sign up, you can have them sign in using their existing social media accounts; you still get basic personal information in return.

Some third-party services go beyond basic details. Cognito, a leading provider of ID verification services, allow you to verify your customers’ identity using nothing but a phone number. This is so much better than asking for a customer’s social security number, since the latter is often seen as too intrusive and may scare customers away.

Good CRM

Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, systems are handy tools to have if you are serious about getting to know your customers. The use of a comprehensive CRM system means you can approach getting to know your customers as a marathon rather than a sprint.

You have all the time in the world. The more customers interact with you – including with your social media and aftersales channels – the more you will know about them. The CRM solution helps compile the data and insights you gain from various sources into a more manageable base of information that you can turn to for more insights in the future.

These three approaches can be implemented without ruining the customer experience you deliver. In some cases, using tools such as Cognito and CRM actually improves customer experience. If you really want to know your customers, these are the strategies to implement.