.jpg)
What makes them tick? What do they like (and dislike)? What are their pain points and challenges?
As a business, this is the core information you need to build a winning product, market and sell it effectively, and retain your customers long-term.
Now...
Modern companies sell products almost exclusively online. And that means there's no way for them to know exactly who they're selling to (or why those people buy). Not unless they make direct, calculated efforts to get to know their customers, at least.
How do they do it, you ask?
The 4 pillars of customer knowledge
Broadly speaking, we can break customer knowledge down into four separate categories, based on which department they're most relevant for.
- Marketing
- Sales
- Product
- Success
Different teams need their own types of customer data — they need to use it in a way that makes the most sense for them. And, ultimately, all four departments need to work together to get a complete picture of your ideal customer.
1. Marketing
The vast majority of the customer journey happens before someone reaches out to your sales team. For most of your customers, they'll discover and learn about your product through (a) your marketing and (b) others' experiences with it.
That's where social proof collateral comes in.
- Testimonials
- Quotes
- Case studies
- Statistics
- Reviews
- User-generated content
People want to know your product works, and they don't want to hear it from just you — 84% of today's buyers say they trust reviews and other kinds of social proof "like they're recommendations from friends or family members."
Of course, you can't control what someone says about you on G2 Crowd. But, when you can gather their feedback internally, you control the distribution.
Once you have it, there are tons of ways to drive web conversions — improving your content by adding quotes and testimonials, running ads using an eye-opening stat, repurposing UGC, the possibilities are endless.
Using Deeto, it's easy to collect, organize, and share your social proof assets. Customers leave feedback within the platform. From there, generative AI curates case studies and other kinds of content. You can even use it to dynamically display content on your website.
2. Sales
Your sales reps can also use your marketing content. Throughout the sales process, their ability to solidify their case for your product depends on whether or not they can share relevant social proof.
- A case study from a successful customer in a similar situation
- A testimonial from a customer in the same industry
- UGC showing real-life uses for your product
But sellers also use the customers themselves. Tons of your customers would be happy to hop on a call with a prospect, talk about their experience, and answer questions only they'd know the answer to.
Building a reference pool for your sales reps is the single best way to drive Decision-stage conversions. For each deal in the pipeline, you can have your reps search for customers who fit the prospect's persona or specific use case. Or, you can have Deeto's smart-matching algorithm take care of that for you.
3. Product
You can do years' worth of market research. Look at all your competitors. Brainstorm ideas with your product team. But, if you want to build a successful product, talking to your customers is the most valuable thing you can do.
They're the ones actually using your product day in and day out. And they know exactly what works, what doesn't, and what new features they'd like to see.
There are several ways you can collect product feedback:
- Surveys
- Customer interviews
- User testing
- In-app feedback tools (for SaaS products)
Gathering this information allows you to prioritize features, fix bugs, and make improvements that align with your customers' needs. Long-term, that's how you retain them and get them to advocate for your product.
4. Success
User satisfaction is the main priority for your Customer Success team, and that's something you can only know by asking the customers themselves.
- Onboarding surveys
- Quarterly check-ins
- NPS surveys
- Support tickets and chats
- Post-implementation reviews
These are things you can mostly automate with software. But the data doesn't mean anything until you use it to inform your customer experience strategies.
What do you do with at-risk customers? How can you improve adoption, time to value, and retention? How can you activate your customers, engage them, and encourage them to advocate for your product?
Deeto helps you take a systematic approach to all 4 pillars of customer knowledge.
For most companies, the major barrier here is access to such a wide variety of data. Maybe you can organize a few case studies or set up product testing, but it's extremely time-consuming and challenging to gather all this information from your entire customer base in a way that's consistent and scalable.
Deeto makes it easy.
- Customers leave their knowledge and insights within the platform.
- Your sales, marketing, product, and CS teams can access it from a central location.
- Our AI curates and suggests the most valuable content for each specific use case or customer interaction.
It aligns all your different departments, so you can turn those insights into action and drive growth across your whole organization.
