Raising Quality

Analysing your Customers

This information is part of the Customers topic.

In this topic:

• What customers want
• Analysing your customers

Keep it simple

There are services that you can pay for to analyse your customer data - and these can be extremely useful (see below, Socio-demographic analysis) but most small to medium sized tourism businesses have a lot of contact with their customers, so are actually in the best position to analyse their own information. The exercise described below is deceptively simple but it has three highly useful outcomes:

• It provides labels for your key customer groups - giving you something concrete and identifiable to focus on when considering their needs and their marketing requirements.
• It helps you identify which types are missing from your key customer groups - giving you immediate leads as to which additional audiences you might want to appeal to and why you might currently be missing out on them.
• It helps you identify what other customer information you should be collecting - so that you can improve your administration methods.

How to do it

The best way is to write down different customer types, nationalities and interests and try to estimate the numbers of customers you've got in each category. There probably won't be many big surprises in this process, but it's a very useful way of really categorising your customers and then thinking about their needs.

1. Create your lifestyle labels

Firstly sit down with whatever books, diaries, bills, spreadsheets, databases and bits of paper you have that will help jog your memory about who your customers have been over recent months.

Next write down a list of labels like those above and try to tally your customers against them. This list is for your own use, so use labels that are really meaningful to you, and obviously only use ones that actually apply to your business. If you are finding it difficult to classify your customers then you may not have the labels right.

You may also want more choice in terms of income levels for example: Budget, Comfortable, Luxury.

You don't have to go through every customer you've had over recent months - depending on your business type it may not be practical to do this, though some businesses, especially accommodation ones, can easily do this successfully.

If this isn't possible then circle the ones that you know apply to your customers and try to give them some sort of order, eg 1 for the most represented group, 2 for the next and so on. Beware though - estimating your customers relies on your perceptions and, while no-one knows your customers like you do, there's no substitute for actually counting. (A bit like keeping a food diary instead of just guessing how much you've had to eat and drink...)

You could try keeping a tally at reception, or the paydesk or wherever is appropriate for your business type over the course of a week or so and see if this matches your expectations. Though obviously you'll have to make assumptions about income, age, interests etc.

2. Record interest as well as type

As well as recording types of customers you should also tally whether they are here on business, as opposed to leisure, or what has motivated their visit, what the main purpose is: Visiting Friends and Family, Walking, Cycling, Golf, Horseriding, Activities, Shopping, Nightlife, Culture, Heritage, Church, Cruise and so on.

3. Keep an origins and nationality tally

Knowing where your customers come from can help you respond to their needs (and shows you where to advertise). In the North East the largest proportions of our visitors come from our own region, then, in order, from Yorkshire, London/South East, Scotland and lastly the North West. You could write these areas down, and any others that come up frequently, and tally against them. Finally write Nationality on your tally sheet. For each overseas customer that you come across or remember write down their nationality eg France, Norway, Germany etc and mark one tally, then keep adding to this as you come across more international customers.

4. Identify your key customers and summarise their needs

By the time you've been through this process you should be able to identify your key customer groups and the key interests of the people who come to your area and buy from you. You should also check your financial information. Which customer types spend the most? Which are the most profitable? Which ones are really the bread and butter of your business?

On a new piece of paper write down ones you repeatedly attract and the ones that deliver the best value to your business in a column on the left. Then go through each one and spend a few minutes on each, thinking hard about the needs of the people in these groups or motivated by these interests. Put yourself in their shoes and try to imagine what they're looking for and hoping for from their holiday and leisure time, and what would make their stay easier. Write down your ideas in the column to the right.

For example, do you get a lot of families with teens? What might they be looking for? Accommodation that allows them to be close but maintain their privacy? Proximity to a variety of stimulating things to do? Wireless connectivity for their teens' toys? Appropriate menus? The possibility of activities that the kids can do whilst the parents do something else like shopping or sightseeing? Clearly you'll need to think about it from your business' perspective, but bear in mind the wider picture. If you're an accommodation provider, for example, you'll want to make sure you are meeting their accommodation needs but you should also think about providing information (including on your website) about places to go, things to see and do and places to eat, and also about partnering with complementary businesses to create suitable packages.

5. Identify your key missing customers and consider their needs

Once you've completed writing down your customers needs look at the customers you don't get, or don't get many of. Are there any on that list that you could cater to now, or you could easily adapt to cater for. Clearly, you have to be logical about this - you can't easily mix older couples hoping to get away from it all with young families. But what about business customers - what are their needs and could you meet them? Wireless broadband? Early breakfasts? Quickly served menus? News or sports television? Papers and books to read? (Business customers often travel alone and eating out in the evening can be uncomfortable. Having a 'prop' like a paper or book to read, or the news or sports to watch can make them feel more comfortable.)

What about groups? Could you cater for parties of fifteen and upwards? What might their needs be? Easy access? Parking? Good loos (really, this rates very highly with group operators)? Free facilities for driver and guides? A choice of competitively priced menus?

And don't forget to consider why you aren't currently attracting visitors from these segments. Is it your marketing - are you not reaching them? Or are you not providing, or not appearing to provide, what they need. Each segment you come across that you could be attracting write down. Write their key needs alongside and any barriers to you attracting them alongside that.

Don't forget nationalities. The North East attracts hundreds of thousands of overseas visitors each year. Our top markets are: Germany, Norway, Ireland, Netherland, USA/Canada, Spain and France in that order. If you aren't getting any of these customers, why? What could you do to attract them?

6. Consider the additional information we know about North East customers

View our page Tourism in the North East - Key Facts to get a good overview of who comes here and why, and what they might be looking for, and look also at Customer Profiles which covers the lifestyle and motivation of our key customer groups and their tourism characteristics. Can you add more to any of the customers' needs after reading this? Or better identify the missing ones and their needs?

7. Consider your enquirers

Analysing the people who enquired but didn't become customers is also very important. These people found your business and were motivated enough to enquire but then didn't actually buy or book. Why?

Some businesses can't do this - for example café and restaurant owners are likely to have almost no information about people who don't book or call in. But other businesses, especially accommodation providers, will have addresses for people they sent literature to or who phoned or emailed to make an enquiry but never booked. If you go through these can you spot any patterns?

The problem with people who don't come is that you know less about them. Could you be capturing more information at the point of enquiry that would help you a) sell more effectively to these customers and b) know more about who is slipping through your fingers? Could you and your staff be asking: when they are thinking of coming, what's the purpose of their trip, who might be in their group and so on? If you have addresses or at least postcodes for these people, consider socio-demographic profiling (see below).

8. Lastly, consider socio-demographic profiling

Socio-demographic profiling simply means running your customers' postcodes through a profiling database. This database has been compiled from the census and from very detailed lifestyle questionnaires taken for most postcodes in the country. From this, data mining companies have built up a description of each postcode: who lives there, how much they earn and what their likes and dislikes are. Of course it's a generalisation, of course not everyone at the same postcode is homogenous, but it can be very useful when used properly.

Data mining companies will take your data (you only need the postcodes and you don't need your customers' permission to do it) pass it through their database and add the type and lifestyle information to each customer record (some companies will send you an Excel spreadsheet with a program built into it, so you can do it yourself). This is particularly useful for enquirers about whom you know very little and will also will give you a really good geographic picture of where your customers come from so you know where to advertise and target. But it isn't cheap. It costs about £50 to profile 500 addresses.

What does it mean?

Once you've completed this exercise you have a clear picture of who comes to you, who doesn't, and what their needs are. Consider typing it up, if you've got the time. Then keep it somewhere very handy, even stuck to the wall, because you'll need this information firmly in mind when reviewing your business. And it will also be invaluable when considering what text, images and ideas to put in your marketing and at your website.

What could you do differently?

For every exercise you go through, try to get in the habit of considering what you could do differently in your business to make capturing information like this, and learning from it, easier.

For customer information, do you always put your customers and enquirer names and addresses into a spreadsheet, database, like Desti.ne Front Desk? If you or your staff are capturing names and addresses straight onto envelopes, for example, to send out your brochures then stop this practice immediately, or at the very least insist that before the envelope is posted, the name and address is captured onto an Excel spreadsheet. If you get enquiries from your website, ask your designer to add to the enquiry form to include: where are you travelling from, how many adults and children in your party, what are your main reasons for this visit, etc. Encourage staff to do the same for phone enquiries.

If you are an attraction you'll know from ticket sales about the age and party make-up of your customers but could you encourage staff to make conversation with guests and find out if they've been before? Where have they travelled from? Are they on holiday or visiting family? What other things have they been doing or are thinking of doing? You don't have to interrogate every customer, but if each member of staff spoke to three customers a day and recorded the information on a spreadsheet in the office you would soon build up a good profile of your customers. In addition it's good customer service and customers like to be taken an interest in, especially if, in the same process, you are also giving them information about other things to see and do.

A similar approach can be taken by craft shops and galleries. Cafés and restaurants, as well as getting into conversation with customers at quieter periods, can also get into the habit of doing a head count, once at lunchtime and once in the evening, and making a note of party size and make-up.

Take the next step in Making a Quality Plan:

Now that you've completed looking at your customers, either return to Making a quality plan to remind yourself of the next steps or go on to.

• Assessing yourself