The need to deeply understand your customers and better serve them through a renovation will create happy customers and boost your business.

In a time with high interest rates and increased inflation, consider the investments people are making in their current homes:

• Median homeownership tenure is 11.9 years, nearly double two decades ago. (Redfin)
• More than three of every five survey respondents plan to stay in their homes for 11 or more years following a renovation. (Houzz 2023 Renovation Trends)

Leverage the information you have alongside public data and technology to provide exceptional customer service, increase your business efficiency, and boost profit potential.

No matter the maturity of your data or technology, relying on factual data and metrics – both qualitative and quantitative – will support your business strategies and outcomes.

Manjot Pal, CEO and founder of Resonate AI, notes that closet design companies could examine areas for optimization, including metrics around job completion, estimations, design options, and operational to-do’s. Focus on task-based items where data and technology provide a starting point, and people can apply strategy and creative thinking.

You may be sitting on valuable data than you realize or are taking advantage of. For example, in manufacturing, applying metrics to utilization, logistics, and the supply chain is common practice, said Richard Pollack, principal at Pollack Consulting.

Begin by organizing the information you already have. This could include:

• Customer details: demographics, past project details, material preferences, budget costs, and customer locations
• Operational data: inventory, timelines and lead times, labor costs, profit margins, and market trends
• Project specs: space details and requests, design preferences, change orders, project hours

Collect additional information
Use public and open-source options to build out your wealth of information. For example, past customer feedback and industry findings: reports, research, and public databases.

Apply valuable learnings
Once you have collected and organized data, you can analyze it to identify trends and patterns.  

Differentiators to set yourself apart include location-specific demographic considerations, regional material and style trends, customer preferences, and competitive offerings.

Create a knowledge base — including past project details, processes, and lessons — that can be applied in the future as a starting point.

Pollack sees details and past project information as underutilized in the closet space. However, incorporating it into the sales process can create clarity from the start, from the customer to the installation. 

“The salesperson knows the components,” he noted. “When the customer is talking about their needs, the salesperson is already thinking. ‘I can bring this to the table and show pictures of past projects.’” 

Then the conversation can focus on how to bring the vision to life with inputs — data sets — from past projects while also factoring in fluctuations — for example, costs or lead times — in real-time, Pollack said.

Grow your potential
Pal, who applied the knowledge he gained while on the product team at Houzz and elsewhere when starting Resonate AI, a service-based chatbot, noted how “hungry” closet and storage industry professionals are to apply AI alongside data to increase business.

“AI adoption could increase the adoption of business data and analytics,” he said, explaining that businesses are currently “trying to figure out how best to use data to inform business decision-making.”

Pal gives the example of using AI to affirm efforts and return on investment: Gather digital marketing and media metrics into a spreadsheet and prompt generative AI to analyze sales efforts and recommend opportunities. 

“That awareness encourages you to think about a problem that you might not even have known existed,” he said, emphasizing using natural business language in prompts, which he calls the “superpower” of Large Language Models.

Layer AI into your work processes by meeting prospects where they are when they are looking for a closet design company. Capture customers before they move on, even when you aren’t available. 

“We have heard across the closet industry stories that when customers call businesses and if they don’t pick up the phone, they just call the next person on the list,” Pal said. “A missed call could mean missed revenue.” 

He reasons that since the caller was seeking your service, it’s a warmer lead that should be easier to convert to a customer.  
Pal’s application responds to calls when you aren’t around via an AI text conversation to qualify customers.

Bringing on a few new customers a month by responding via AI text could provide significant revenue and set you apart for your attentiveness. 

Reduce risk/increase business
By relying on quality data, businesses can reduce uncertainty, improve efficiency, and increase the likelihood of success. Let data and technology be your competitive advantage to closing more projects and delivering them more efficiently, delighting real-life customers along the way.