Brand ambassadors are some of your most important customers. They’re the ones who get the word out about your brand, sharing information about your products, your company, and your services. A good brand ambassador might come onto your social media channels and answer some of the most frequently asked questions about your business. Building brand ambassadors, however, means going beyond the basics of customer service and creating solid data analysis techniques that allow you to see what your customers really want from your business and allowing you to create it so that they’ll go out of their way to post positive reviews, share information about your company, and connect with others who are interested in your products and services. What transforms customers from one-time customers to repeat customers, then helps them take that vital step to becoming brand ambassadors? It starts with a data dashboard that will allow you to collect information, analyze it, and determine how you can best reach out to those important customers.

Building Your Data Dashboard: The Basics

You collect a wide range of data about your customers every day. When the time comes to analyze it, it can be difficult to break it down and discover exactly what you need to know. By building a data dashboard, you can get a better look at exactly the information you need for a specific platform – in this case, the data that will help you build and reward brand ambassadors. Make sure that your data dashboard includes:

• Email analytics
• Social media monitoring
• Survey responses
• Google Analytics revisits
• Repeat buyers
• Customer support

When your brand first starts out, you might not be able to find brand ambassadors easily. Over time, however, you’ll develop a collection of happy customers who are willing to say all of those great things about your business – and as your business grows, you’ll be able to collect more data about those customers so that you can effectively create more of them.

Survey Responses

The best thing about surveys is that they allow you to ask your customers exactly the questions you most want to know the answers to. Whether you’re conducting a survey at the end of a purchase experience to determine whether or not a customer was satisfied or taking a quick poll at the end of a customer service interaction to ensure that your staff is providing the best possible service for your customers, surveys allow you to ask your questions. You don’t have to wait for customers to organically provide that feedback; instead, you’re actively seeking them out and asking them. This is one of the easiest ways to build specific data. There are some rules to keep in mind for effective survey creation and collection.

Don’t overdo the questions. You’ve finally got people answering your survey, and you’re ready to learn all the important pieces of information about them. The longer your survey, however, the better the odds that your customers will get frustrated and stop answering. Short, 1-5 question surveys are often more effective than long, drawn-out affairs – so get to the point.

Give customers room for more information. Always leave room for comments – ideally with each question, depending on what type of data you’re collecting. This will allow you deeper insight into your customers. Not everyone will take advantage of the ability to share information, but many people will.

Start with your objectives. What are you hoping to accomplish with the data you collect from your survey? Starting with clearly-defined objectives will allow you to keep your focus as you craft your questions.

Keep it simple. Customers aren’t looking for a deep, philosophical experience when they answer your survey questions. While you’ll get a few thoughtful answers, you’ll also get plenty of quick responses – and your questions need to be designed to account for that.

Look for patterns. When customers answer your survey questions, what types of patterns appear? There are always going to be some outliers: customers who completely satisfied in an area that no one else likes or customers who are very upset when most of your customers are very happy with your business. Make sure your survey data is watching for patterns, not just collecting responses.

Social Media Monitoring

Your social media pages provide an excellent opportunity to connect with your customers, learn more about them, and discover what they really think about your brand. Your most enthusiastic customers – both the ones who will eventually become brand ambassadors and the ones who are the least satisfied with your company – will be the ones most likely to engage on social media, so this is one excellent way to learn more about them and connect with them more effectively. By monitoring social media conversations, you can collect a wide range of data that will make it easier for you to build brand ambassadors across your business.

When it comes to building brand ambassadors, there are specific pieces of data that you’ll want to keep your focus on. While there are plenty of strategies and recommendations for social media monitoring, you want to focus your brand ambassador data dashboard on the specific pieces of information that will build your brand ambassadors, including:

What makes customers happiest? What’s making them rave about your brand? How can you ‘double down’ on that?

What are customers asking for? This doesn’t necessarily have to mean complaints. If you want brand ambassadors, you need to give customers what they want or need most. If they’re asking for a specific product that you don’t offer, suggesting improvements or variations, or routinely asking questions about a specific product or type of product, that information should be on your data dashboard. When you provide customers with what they want, they’re more likely to rave about your business in the future.

When are customers most likely to connect? If you want to join in the conversation, it’s important to meet customers where they’re spending their time. Customers commenting and posting on social media are usually doing so on their own time – and that’s when you’re most likely to be able to connect with them in the future.

What engages your customers? How engaged are your customers? Are they liking, sharing, and reposting your content? What convinces them to get more engaged? Engaged customers are already on their way to becoming brand ambassadors as their interest in your company is noticed by others in their social circles.

Email Analytics

Your email list is a great place to start when you’re trying to recruit more brand ambassadors, but it’s also an excellent way to collect more information about your customers and determine what they’re looking for from your brand. Consider these critical email analytics questions:

• What types of content convince your customers to open their emails?
• What content provokes the most clicks to your website?
• What types of emails do you send that promote purchases? What about other types of responses to the email campaign?
• How are your referral emails – emails encouraging ambassadors to refer others to your company – working?

Your email lists are among the best ways to connect effectively with your customers and deliver content that is specifically geared toward each one – a critical component of building effective brand ambassadors. By tracking the types of content that are most likely to get responses and evaluating the responses you receive, you’ll quickly discover that you’re in a better position to learn more about your customers, building up repeat visitors to become brand ambassadors to your business.

Google Analytics Revisits

Some customers will visit your website only once, then look to your competitors in the future. Other customers, however, will continue to revisit your website. Check your Google Analytics data to discover what causes those critical revisits. Is there a specific content page that is visited frequently? What’s the initial landing page that is most likely to encourage revisits to your site? When you know what builds leads into customers, you’re more likely to be able to create those types of pages in the future.

Repeat Buyers

Repeat buyers form the backbone of your company. While you’re always eager to bring in new customers, repeat buyers – those who keep coming back – are the ones who have the largest overall customer value. Repeat buyers are also the ones who are ideally positioned to become brand ambassadors for your business: after all, they’re the ones who keep coming back to your company! Keep information about repeat buyers on your data dashboard: connections to the email lists that contain them, information about their buying experiences, and data concerning the products or services that are most likely to bring in repeat buyers.

Customer Support

Eventually, even the most excited customer is going to end up contacting your company for support. Whether they received an order that was mixed up or they’ve had a question about a product they’re using, they need to connect directly with your company. Keep track of those customer support interactions. A brief survey at the end can let you know whether or not a customer was satisfied with the answers they received, but you also need to know:

• How your customers choose to connect with customer support. Do they prefer email, phone communication, or a direct chat on the website?
• What issues are coming up most often in customer support. Is there a particular product that is defective? Do you need to make a specific of instructions clearer or provide more information on your website in a critical area?
• How do customers respond to your customer service team?
• Does your customer service team have the ability to create the response your customers are asking for when they connect with your business? For example, are they able to offer product substitutions or provide the information that customers are looking for?

Customers understand that mistakes happen and issues come up. A quality customer service experience, however, is often the difference between a customer who leaves happy and satisfied with your brand and one who is reluctant to return – and a bad customer service experience can turn even the most ardent brand ambassador away from your company forever.

Building brand ambassadors is an important process for your company. In many cases, these individuals do the work of marketing for you, making it easier for you to reach out to an audience you might not otherwise ever see. By building an effective data dashboard that allows you to collect and analyze data about your repeat customers, what your customers want, and who your most effective customers are, you can create and connect with these brand ambassadors, utilizing them to make the most out of every opportunity for your business.

Ready to get started? Get your first data dashboard absolutely free – forever! That’s right – no limited time trial, no limited functionality, no credit card necessary, just data to help you create your brand ambassadors! Start today!