Clienteling is the art of building closer relationships with customers, using mobile technology to extend VIP treatment to everyone.

Customer relationship management (CRM) has been about for as long as there have been customers. The tools may change but the goal has always been the same: get to know your customers and encourage them to buy more, more often.

In many ways clienteling is a throwback to a time when local shopkeepers knew each and every customer that visited – their likes, dislikes, wants and needs.

Of course we live in a world where retailers have stores in different locations with thousands of customers buying through multiple channels. It’s basically impossible for individual sales associates to retain all that information. But that’s where technology comes in.

By blending in-store wi-fi, tablet devices, real-time customer data and stock information, you can create a tool that will motivate sales associates, delight customers – and boost the bottom line.

Clienteling and Mobile POS

Our clienteling tool can run on an iPad (or similar tablet device) or almost any device with a web browser. It pulls in multichannel CRM data and has been built with an intuitive front end for sales associates.

It can be tailored and branded to reflect a retailer’s look and ways of working. Using it will help you create an impressive mobile black book while blueprinting best practice processes.

Which all sounds great; but it’ll only work if customers buy into the idea. Without that buy-in, you’ll have a big hole at the heart of your CRM data and you won’t have the full picture. The key is getting your sales associates to understand the benefits. If they can see the benefits, they’ll capture the data.

In the past, collecting customer data in-store was often an afterthought. Customers at the checkout want to pay and go – not fill in forms and sign up for loyalty schemes.

So you need to make the process quick and painless – and build it into everyday customer service behaviour. Mobile technology, consumer devices, joined up systems and central access make that possible. Then you’re on the way to a better class of clienteling.