There's no denying it: your customers and users are your company's most valuable assets. After all, all departments work together to attract, convert, and retain users . But they generate much more than revenue for your business: customers are a source of data and intelligence to continually improve your product or service.
Knowing the customers who consume what you offer is crucial for obtaining data that helps you make better business decisions . With this data, every strategy can be calculated and based on real data, allowing you to direct efforts toward more assertive tactics aligned with your ideal customer profile .
Today, we live in the data age. We can uncover customer information through various touchpoints, from filling out a form, interacting with a system, or completing a satisfaction survey .
The question is: What do you need to know? The challenge is gathering information about your customers that is essential for planning your business strategies.
The art of extracting insights from information
Even though the goal of this content is to list the most relevant data for SaaS product customers , it's important to make it clear that other companies can also benefit from this method.
All the information we present can also be acquired and analyzed from physical companies, such as service providers and retailers. However, the data collection and analysis methods are different.
Extracting insights from data is subjective, as each business may reach different conclusions. Therefore, keep in mind that data analysis offers resources for evaluating the performance of past actions and planning future strategies based on the objectives your company seeks to achieve.
Benefits of knowing your customers in depth
Understanding your customers in depth isn't just a competitive advantage—it's essential to your business's success. When you understand your audience's needs, preferences, and behaviors, you can make more informed decisions, offer personalized experiences, and build lasting relationships.
1. Improved customer retention.
Satisfied customers are more likely to return and recommend your company to others. By understanding their consumption patterns and expectations, you can create specific strategies to retain existing customers, reducing acquisition costs and increasing their value over time.
2. Personalization that delights
In today's market, personalization isn't just a differentiator—it's an expectation. From product recommendations to communications more aligned with individual interests, customer data enables you to create unique experiences that set your brand apart.
3. Increased ROI and Operational Efficiency
Data-driven decisions ensure your resources are directed to what really works. More targeted campaigns, products aligned with market demands, and more effective service are just some ways to maximize results based on concrete information about your customers.
Practical example:
Consider a retail store that uses customer purchase data to identify the most popular products at specific times of the year. With this information, the company adjusts its inventory and creates targeted promotions, increasing sales and reducing waste.
In short, investing in your customer's knowledge isn't just about understanding who they are, but about transforming those insights into strategies that drive your company's growth.
7 customer information you need to know
As we mentioned, understanding consumer behavior allows you to identify new opportunities, identify situations where your competition has an advantage, and, most importantly, solve problems. This improves your product and helps you gain more market share.
No matter what your business is, there is information you need to know about your customers:
1. Who are your customers?
Some people underestimate customer business data, but the truth is that information about job title and department is the first step to understanding your user base. This data may vary depending on your segment and business, but it reveals a lot about the audience you attract through your strategies.
Why it's important : Determining your customers' professional profile is useful for discovering who sees value in your product/service. More than that, it gives you more insights to create initiatives that will attract more professionals like these.
How to collect data : Professional information can usually be gathered early in the customer journey, whether through a completed form, at the time of purchase, or at the time of contract signing. Depending on your prospecting process, you can also gather this data from the customer's social media profiles, such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
2. Are they using what they bought?
Just as important as acquiring new customers is knowing whether they're actually using your product or service. Believe it or not, customers who purchase software and stop using it after a few weeks are more common than you might think. It's a binary situation: the customer can be active or inactive, primarily considering the number of logins and time spent with the product.
Why it's important : Knowing whether or not customers are using your product is a quick and easy way to predict potential churn. Customers who demonstrate daily and weekly activity with your product are more likely to see value in it.
How to collect data : There are free tools that allow you to track daily, weekly, and monthly user activity and determine whether they're engaging with your product, such as Heap Analytics and Google Analytics . This allows you to create macro-segmentation of active and inactive customers.
3. How do they interact with your product?
More than identifying user activity and inactivity, another piece of information you need to know about your customers is the type of interaction they engage with on your platform. This takes into account actions performed, resources accessed, and decisions made.
Why it's important : When you understand how your customers use your product, you can help them get more out of your solution, whether by suggesting new features or best practices to get more results with what they already use. This information can also identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, where customers purchase an add-on or a better plan to gain more possibilities with what you offer.
How to collect data : Tracking specific user activity requires more than just the number of logins and time spent on the platform. Once you've identified the most important actions for identifying engaged customers, you need software with event tracking capabilities and real-time engagement metrics to collect activity data.
4. What are your expectations?
Customers purchase a product or service with a goal in mind. It could be to solve a pain point, resolve a problem, or achieve better results. Before purchasing, they have an expectation and hope that it will be achieved with your help.
Why it's important : Knowing your customer's expectations, as well as their perception of value, is crucial to understanding how you'll help achieve that goal. Understanding expectations provides insights to improve your customer support process to help you achieve that goal.
How to collect data : Since this is qualitative research, the best option is to request this information during the final conversion process using smart forms, or immediately after the purchase/hiring process using a survey. We suggest using customer experience management software to speed up and facilitate response analysis.
5. Do they achieve results?
You already know that value expectations are essential information about your customer . Now ask yourself: is your company delivering the results they expect? Whether your business is B2B or B2C, every user expects to meet their expectations and obtain results from purchasing a product/service. It's no wonder that many products focus on the word "solution" to describe their features and possible uses.
Why it's important : When a company has control over how it meets these expectations, it becomes easier to provide a good customer experience. Customers who achieve good results can become case studies, while those who struggle need attention. After all, customer satisfaction is directly related to whether they achieve their initial goals and expectations. The name suggests: Customer Success , and it depends on delivering true success to the customer!
How to collect data : In this case, it's recommended to combine a Customer Success Management tool with customer survey software . While the former helps you monitor customers throughout the process to determine whether they're achieving the expected results, the latter can use the customer themselves as a source of information. By analyzing this data, you can extract insights into which features deliver the best results for your customers and improvements that help speed up and/or improve the process.
6. How satisfied are you?
The ultimate goal of companies is to build a loyal customer base. When a user is satisfied with the solution you offer, it means your company is doing a good job. This is especially true today, when customer experience must be a priority in business strategies.
Why it's important : Satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your product/service when the time comes. Identifying who is satisfied can be used to attract new customers. Otherwise, they may be struggling to achieve success.
How to collect data : One of the best ways to measure customer satisfaction is using NPS, the Net Promoter Score . It's a simple and reliable metric for measuring customer loyalty. Customers should answer the following question on a scale of 0 to 10: "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?" Because it's a widespread methodology, there are software programs that help collect and automate the extraction of satisfaction reports .
7. What do they say about you?
Customer feedback is valuable. When users have a channel to express their opinions and have their voice heard by the company, they feel encouraged to share their experiences with the product or service, whether positive or negative.
Why it's important: Regardless of the customer's situation, feedback is crucial for the product, service, and the company offering it. User comments can provide ideas for improvements in the acquisition and implementation process, customer service , and even the development of new features. No one knows better than the customer themselves how your product can be improved!
How to collect data: Again, a survey is key to getting customer feedback. When creating the questionnaire, try to create objective questions that help determine how your customer views your company. This makes it easier to analyze the results and extract insights to strengthen your strategy. The data will be essential for deciding your next steps.
Top mistakes when collecting customer data that you need to avoid
Collecting customer data is crucial for strategic decisions, but doing it incorrectly can cause more problems than benefits. Avoiding common mistakes ensures that the information collected is useful, relevant, and, above all, respectful of consumer privacy. Here are the main mistakes to avoid:
1. Collecting irrelevant data.
Many businesses make the mistake of collecting information that has no practical application. Asking for more data than necessary can generate distrust in customers and create a volume of information that is difficult to organize and analyze. Make sure each piece of data collected has a clear purpose.
2. Not ensuring data accuracy
Outdated or incorrect data is one of the biggest enemies of a successful strategy. Make sure you validate and review information regularly to avoid making decisions based on erroneous data.
3. Ignoring security and privacy.
With increasing data protection regulations, such as the LGPD (General Data Protection Law), data collection must always comply with the law. Neglecting data security can lead to legal penalties and a loss of customer trust.
4. Lack of transparency in data collection
A common mistake is not clearly communicating why and how data is being collected. Being transparent not only meets legal requirements but also strengthens customer trust in your brand.
5. Not using collected data
Perhaps the most frustrating mistake is collecting data and never using it. Valuable information about customer behavior and preferences needs to be applied to strategic actions to generate value for the business.
How to avoid these mistakes?
- Only collect data you actually intend to use.
- Update and review data regularly to ensure its validity.
- Invest in secure storage and analysis tools
- Be transparent with customers about the collection and use of their information.
- Transform data into actionable insights that improve decisions and the customer experience .
By avoiding these mistakes, your company not only ensures efficient data collection but also builds a relationship of trust and respect with your customers, which is essential for long-term success.
Believe in the power of information
Knowing how to collect and use customer information is crucial to the success of your business. Companies need to apply data intelligence to their processes to constantly evolve. The mission of being responsible for customer success must be aligned with the expansion of data tracking and analysis technologies.
So, now that you know what information and data you need to know about your customers , it's time to get started. Remember, you need to use smart tools that facilitate the collection and analysis of activity, engagement, and satisfaction data.
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This is a guest post written by Saulo Sobanski . Would you like to have one of your articles featured on our blog? Send an email to marketing@harmo.me.
