It’s a Good Day to Get to Know Your Customers! [7 Expert Views]

2020 was a teaching year. We've learned how to support each other as small businesses and tackled the challenges 2020 brought with innovative solutions.

At Prisync, we've had several collaborations, partnerships and campaigns where we got a chance to know our customers and other small businesses better. And all we've learned in the past year shedded light on how to approach customer relationships in 2021.

And creative teams-like us :)-had inspiring stories all around the world, so we've decided to bring you a glimpse of their vision and productivity on Get to Know Your Customers Day!

Let's hear what our incredible friends experienced in their own words.

The year 2020 was a tough year for the world because of the pandemic, but it was a time when we realized even more clearly that together with our customers, we could impact the e-commerce world and make it better. So much has been accomplished over the past year, and every idea we had was aimed at improving our customers' e-commerce experience.

​One of our top priorities was to get closer to our customers. We launched live support chat on our website, which helped us increase customer engagement by over 30% and improve overall customer retention rates.

Second, we started to focus on conversational marketing and share tips and valuable information with our customers through chats. This really helped us to educate them about Growave and show what value it can bring to their online stores.

Also, we launched reduced pricing as a support to our customers due to the pandemic. We started to collect feedback from our merchants to understand them better and provide a better experience.

Aidai Abaidulaeva

"We've stopped looking at case studies through a sales lens, and started including intangibles as well"

We stopped looking at case studies through a sales lens, and started including intangibles as well. ReferralCandy is a referrals app for Shopify; our merchants expect to drive new sales and customers.

But every merchant is different in their own ways - subscription boxes like A Box of Stories operate on a different model than Critical Pass (law school study materials) or Ledger (hardware wallet for cryptocurrency).

We dived deeper into each merchant's context and business model, and our case studies have become more effective in terms of storytelling and relevance. For example, we explore how new mums form communities in our Riff Raff case study and how Miao Miao harnesses the power of influencers with their referral program.

This has also led to further experiments in talking to merchants and understanding their needs on a deeper level.

Raul Galera

"Starting from the end of May 2020, we offered our tool for a dollar for three months, both to new and existing customers who were in financial stress"

A lot of businesses had helped each other out to navigate the challenges 2020 brought. And we wanted to be a part of that solidarity here at Prisync.

Starting from the end of May, we offered our tool for a dollar for three months, to SMBs-new and existing customers-who were in financial stress. We sincerely believe that pricing optimization affects sales directly and immediately. So the idea was, they were going to make our tool useful immediately and give Prisync a solid chance.

We did our best to make sure the setup was super easy-not to cause anyone extra trouble-and our plan worked! Nearly 65% of new businesses we've met at the time are still together with us today! And we're closer than ever with some of our existing customers who've benefited from this campaign.

So in short, what 2020 taught us is that you always have something to offer. Just put some thought into how you can help and hope for the best!

Talat Karataş

"The lessons learned-do not assume anything and even small actions can make a huge difference"

Back in 2020, when I had just joined the Printful team, I believed that all business owners always know what's the best for their company. I was given a big booming client and while preparing for the holiday season, we realized that they actually had no plans for it.

We decided on a couple of small promo ideas. We added a Christmas element to their top designs and launched a small Christmas collection. That month their sales doubled, making them one of our top-performing accounts.

The lessons learned-do not assume anything and even small actions can make a huge difference

Daria Snurnitsyna

"We made a few product videos, explaining to our future customers how our products will help not only save money but also time - something that is of more value these days"

In 2020, we decided to include video as a part of our marketing strategy at Sixads and it paid off. We made a few product videos, explaining to our future customers how our products will help not only save money but also time - something that is of more value these days. With a smart paid advertising strategy, the videos quickly went viral, and our future, as well as current customers, learned not only about the app but about our company too.

They learned that we are people just like them. They have started to reach out more and engage with us as opposed to just discontinuing our services. This kind of direct dialogue with our prospects as well as paying customers will help us improve our product significantly.

Kristina Ziauke

"In 2020 I started including short explainer videos in the emails that I sent to clients with their quote"

On a mission to improve efficiencies without losing the personal touch, I tried a new approach here at LiveHelpNow. My goal was to reduce the number of emails I was getting in relation to quotes that I sent. In 2020 I started including short explainer videos in the emails that I sent to clients with their quote. These would be around 30 seconds long and it would be me explaining what was included in the quote, where the pricing came from, what discount was applied and where they needed to sign.

Basically I took a short amount of time to talk the customer through the quote that I was also sending them so if they had any questions about the quote, hopefully I'd have already answered them in my video. Because I made the video for each quote that I sent, it was personalized to the customer so it didn't feel like a bot messaging them but also reduced the number of emails in the chain from, on average, five to only two.

Not only did this reduce the number of emails, it reduced the time from sending the quote to receiving the signature to proceed, on average this was now only 48 hours whereas previously it had been 2 weeks.

Due to the success of this approach, I looked to see where else I could apply the same methodology of reducing the number of emails without reducing the personalization. I'm hoping to streamline our onboarding process in a similar and more interactive way in the coming months.

Annie Gray

"Our biggest learning from this: find ways to proactively identify what resources your customers need and then fiercely fill these gaps"

Sometime in 2020, we realized that we had no way of knowing what kind of form templates people are searching for in our directory, and if they're finding the forms that they need. A few quick code tweaks - and we set up a Google Analytics report that captures visitors' queries and how many individual template pages matched the search.

It's been an absolute goldmine of insights and inspiration for us at Paperform. Since then, we've released more than 300 new form templates, most of them based on the use-cases that our customers and leads have been looking for.

Also, whenever someone reaches out to our customer success team with a template request, we'd usually create one within a few days and let that person know. We believe that this strategy won us over quite a few vocal promoters and loyal subscribers.
Our biggest learning from this: find ways to proactively identify what resources your customers need and then fiercely fill these gaps

Vlad Shvets

customer relationships