It's good to have lots of information about a customer. I know that lots of businesses are looking at business intelligence (BI) solutions to help them better understand their customers, determine who to market to, how to market, and maybe sell more to each customer.
However finding out that information isn't a science with many companies. Instead they tend to use the same information for potential customers that they do with their real customers. There's a business that I like, it's a national chain, and so I went to their web site recently to see if they were offering coupons. They had a signup for email coupons, so I clicked it. The form asked for:
- name
- address
- email address
- phone (day and night)
- cell phone
Very little of which is needed. What does all this information help you with? Maybe it allows you to mail things, but I've just asked for email coupons. I don't necessarily want printed coupons, but they could ask me.
Instead I'm annoyed by the large form, which could have been limited to email address and maybe zip code if you want to target a little more. Address isn't needed, and cell phone certainly isn't needed.
It's more information to secure, more for the customer to enter, and who knows how many people get annoyed and bail on the form.
Before you put something up, put yourself in your customers' shoes and see what's reasonable. I'm sure this is code being reused, but it's imposing a burden on the customer that can be detrimental to the relationship.
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