Customer inquiries can be both a blessing and a curse for retailers. On the one hand, they’re a sign that your customers are interested and engaged. On the other, inquiries coming from every direction—socials, live chat, emails, phone calls, and in-store—can quickly overwhelm even the most organised business owner.
In this post, I’ll share practical strategies to help you manage customer inquiries effectively, so you never miss a potential sale or leave a customer feeling frustrated.
Why Customer Inquiries Matter
Every customer inquiry is an opportunity. Whether someone is asking for more information about a product or looking for help with a problem, these inquiries represent a chance to build loyalty, improve satisfaction, and close sales. Ignoring or mishandling them can drive customers straight to your competitors.
Yet, managing inquiries is often overwhelming. When I ran my retail business, I used to feel like I was interrupted every 15 minutes during busy periods. It wasn’t until I implemented a system and delegated responsibility that I could finally stay on top of inquiries and reclaim my time.
The Risks of Not Managing Inquiries Properly
Without a system in place, two major problems can occur:
- Frustrated customers – If a customer has to repeat themselves multiple times or feels like they’re being ignored, it can lead to dissatisfaction and lost trust.
-
Missed opportunities – When inquiries go unanswered, you risk losing sales and disappointing customers who were ready to buy.
Practical Solutions for Managing Customer Inquiries
Here are some effective strategies for different types of businesses:
1. For In-Store Inquiries: Use an Inquiry Book
Ditch the post-it notes and create an inquiry book. This keeps all in-store inquiries in one place, making it easy for staff to follow up and avoid things slipping through the cracks.
2. For Digital Inquiries: Try a CRM or Task Management System
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a great option for larger businesses. These platforms let you create tickets, track interactions, and ensure no inquiry is overlooked. For smaller teams, a simpler task management tool like Asana works well. You can list open inquiries, assign tasks, and update progress—all in one place.
3. Cloud-Based Simplicity
If you’re not ready to invest in a dedicated system, even tools like Google Docs or the Notes app can be effective. Create a shared document for tracking inquiries and ensure staff regularly update it. The key is consistency—whatever system you choose must be easy to use and prioritised by your team.
Managing customer inquiries doesn’t have to be a burden. With the right system and a committed team, you can turn inquiries into a powerful tool for driving sales and improving customer relationships.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
We have customer inquiries coming to us from so many sources, from our socials, our live chat, emails, telephone calls, and of course in-store as well. It's so easy to forget to follow up in these inquiries. So in today's podcast, we look at things you can do to keep your customer inquiries under control and never miss these potential sales.
Hi, I'm Nicole Keleher and welcome to the Retail Success Series, the podcast for retail owners who want to build businesses they truly love. I'm excited to share what I've learned with both in-store and e-commerce owners like you, helping you create a business that's fulfilling both financially and personally. So get comfy, grab your favourite drink, and get ready to be inspired as we dive into the world of retail success.
I think customer inquiries are one of the greatest opportunities that we have in small business and for retailers, but it's also, I think, one of the biggest overwhelms that we have. I know when I was managing my business and I was looking after my customer inquiries myself and managing the business and answering phone calls during our busy time, I felt like I was interrupted, gosh, every 15 minutes and I couldn't get anything else done and it just sort of totally overwhelmed me at times. So for me at the time, I decided to get one of my staff members to look after that area of the business and it took so much pressure off.
I think one of the biggest problems we have in this area is that our business won't normally start with a customer management system in place. It's something that we end up having to build up as we get busier and busier. We start quite ad hoc and that means that when we come to have that situation where there's a lot more inquiries coming in, we don't necessarily have the forethought and the system in place for the team to engage with and to help keep everything running smoothly for you.
The other problem small businesses can face is that we are sometimes encouraged to get into systems that are almost too big for our needs and so they can overcomplicate the problem and having a more complicated system might mean that your staff are not going to buy into it as easily. But if you don't have any systems in place, I think there's a really high chance of two possible problems that can occur. First of all, if you've got customers who have to ring multiple times or email whatever the system is that they're talking to you and have to explain their problem over and over again or their product that they're after, whether it's positive or negative, they're going to get frustrated by this process.
Or the second option unfortunately is your system lets you down, someone's made an inquiry and no one bothers getting back to them. These people want to buy from us, but we haven't got back to them and that's, I would say, disappointed them and they are far more likely to go elsewhere. So we've all been in a situation where we are busy.
As I say, these inquiries come in and it can just be incredibly overwhelming to deal with all of those. And so rather than sort of stopping what you're doing, you tend to go on and do the other jobs and sort of say, I'll get back to those emails later. But again, I just want to state, it's really crucial that we do get back to these people because they're most likely to be contacting us for one of two reasons.
They either have a problem already or they're interested in making a purchase and both of them need to be fixed to ensure that the customer experience stays positive for them. So let's have a look at what systems you could put in place. First of all, if you're in store, have an inquiry book.
I know too many people and I've done it myself. It's worked on the old post-it note system where there's ad hoc messages left all over the place for people to follow up and there's no real management at that process. So if you have it in one book, you can make sure someone is assigned to check the book regularly, follow up anything that needs to be followed up and keep those customers happy and fulfilled.
For all other inquiries, your method may be determined by the size of your business and how many of your staff are involved in the sort of touch points of working with their customers. So if you're a bigger business, you might have multiple stores, you've got warehouse staff, you've got customer service staff, there's a good chance multiple people could help a customer. So you're probably going to need a customer relationship management system, a CRM system.
So a lot of apps are out there for these sort of problems. It is a bigger system. They allow you to create tickets to deal with problems.
They keep notes of all the engagements that your staff have with a customer so you can satisfy their needs. The next step down would be a system like Asana, which is a project or task sort of management system. A basic app was the one that we chose to use.
What we did was create a simple task or project within Asana and we would list every inquiry that we had that hadn't been fulfilled and finished and that way we could go back and check through that and keep an eye on them and try and solve the problems for the customers. By having it in something like Asana, it means that it's cloud-based so it didn't matter where we were. So even me working at home or the staff in the store or warehouse staff, they could all see the information there and help the customers as needed.
Other cloud-based options that exist now are just simple things like using notes I know they're on my Mac and in my phone or Google Docs. If you use Google Docs, I don't actually use them at all, but if that's the system that you use, you could have a Google Doc that lists all your customer inquiries and have certain staff who are there to always keep an eye on it and make sure that they have notes when the customer inquiries are fulfilled. The most crucial thing with any sort of customer management system like this is that the entire team knows that they must fill out the details and keep the information in that one place.
If team members are busy and they go, oh it's one more job, I'm not going to bother writing in Asana or putting my Google Doc or whatever it might be, it means that the whole system can fall apart. So you've got to state it's crucial, it's got to be a priority and making sure the entire team knows the value of every one of those inquiries you get. They are not a problem, those inquiries, they are an opportunity.
And too often because they break into our day, we see them as this threat, this problem, oh my god, I'm so tired of dealing with people, so we don't do it. But these little systems will help manage that and help ensure you maximize the return from every single one of those clients. Hope this has been helpful.
I'll be back soon. Have a sensational day. Need help with your retail marketing? Check out our website, theretailmarketers.com for information on our marketing audit, consulting services and course information.
You'll also find information on business tools I use and have used in my retail store and free downloadable content. That's theretailmarketers.com
Leave a comment (all fields required)