How to track your client information

Are you tracking your client information? If not, you could be missing out on huge opportunities for your organisation. Tracking client information makes it easy for you to:

• Personalise your service by recording key details about your client or members
• Save time by having all the information you need on hand
• Keep track of communication to avoid contacting clients too often – or not enough
• Gain insights into opportunities in your client relationships

It also means you can provide better customer service to your clients. Without a systematic approach to tracking client information, you risk looking unprofessional, and even losing clients. A study by Forbes showed that 96% of people are willing to leave a business because of bad customer service. The upside of this is that many your potential clients will be more likely to consider joining you if you can demonstrate better customer service than your competitors.

How to gather information about your client

Every interaction you have with a client or potential client is an opportunity to gather information, whether they’re completing an intake form, or you’re having a friendly conversation. If you’re not already gathering client data, it’s easy to get started:

1. Track conversations

Every time you interact with your client, whether it’s via email, phone or in person, keep a record. This will help you remember small details, like their interests or their main concerns about their work, so that you can make future interactions more personal. Over time you may also notice patterns that help you provide better service – for instance, you might notice that a particular client always struggles with a particular part of their tax return. If the following year you provide them with targeted advice heading into tax time, it’s going to create a positive impression.

2. Gather data from your website

Using tools like Google Analytics you can gather a lot of information from your website like the demographics of people who visit your site, what they’re searching for when they land on your site, and what pages they spend the most time on. This can help you plan how you target new clients. You can also embed forms on your website using tools like SwiftFox to gather even more information.

3. Intake forms and surveys

For really detailed data gathering, try intake forms and surveys. For instance, you might send a survey to a client when they’ve been with you for a certain length of time, or you might survey all of your customers once a year. This can let you gain specific insights into your clients, and when you use a tool like SwiftFox to email forms, it makes it easy to gather replies in one place.

How to track your client data

Once you’ve gathered the information from your clients, you need a way of tracking it. Before we had computers, client information would be stored in cumbersome filing systems, or simply remembered by the staff member responsible for liaising with the client. This posed a big potential problem for businesses – if that staff member left the business, all their knowledge would go with them too.

Fortunately, there are a lot more options to track various aspects of your client information these days, including spreadsheets, accounting software and online file hosting. But if you’re looking for one piece of software that can track a wide range of data and information, you’ll need a customer relationship management tool (CRM).

Benefits of using a CRM

Everything in one place

A CRM makes it easy to keep all of your client data in one place, from a record of your activities and interactions, to details about their hobbies and interests, events they’ve attended and emails they’ve clicked on. This makes it easy to tailor your interactions and proposals to best suit them.

With SwiftFox, you can also integrate other software, including Outlook, Gmail and practice manager tools, to gain extremely detailed intelligence about your relationships with your clients.

Powerful data

Put the data you’ve gathered to work, and use the CRM’s inbuilt data tools to gain valuable insights into your clients. SwiftFox lets you build customer reports and view dashboard analytics on all of your data, which can give you an unparalleled edge in building your business.

Better collaboration

A CRM makes it easy to work as a team. It means everyone has access to the files and data they need, and with SwiftFox you can assign tasks to team members and track everyone’s responsibilities. And by having everything stored centrally, it makes it easy if someone new needs to step in and run a project.

Privacy

Another benefit of using a CRM is that it provides a secure method for tracking client information. This gives you peace of mind, and it’s reassuring for your clients, too, especially if they regularly deal with sensitive data and information. When you use a CRM like SwiftFox, you get the benefits of a clear user permissions systems, which means only the people you grant access can view the information. And by having all your data stored in one secure place that can be accessed by relevant staff members, you avoid the risks of transferring files by insecure methods such as email.

Conclusion

Your clients are at the heart of your business, and a good CRM can help you keep track of everything you need to know about your clients.

If you’re an accounting firm or a professional service provider looking to set a CRM up for your business, we’ve got the solution to suit you.