Long before the rise of ecommerce and online customer support, clienteling was the primary way brands and retailers ensured customer satisfaction, especially in the luxury retail market. In particular, clienteling was used as a strategy to increase sales among the most loyal of customers.

Clienteling, by definition, is a technique employed by salespeople to cater their services and product recommendations based on what they know about each customer. To successfully clientele, salespeople gather data about previous interactions and customers’ buying behavior and use that data to form a long-term relationship that also results in increased lifetime value.

While digital marketing often focuses on customer acquisition, clienteling is designed to retain customers and increase loyalty by using the data previously collected to create personalized shopping experiences for those customers.

Clienteling is a type of sales strategy. Clienteling apps are software platforms that make it easier and more efficient for your sales team to clientele on a grand scale.

A clienteling app is meant to streamline retailers' outreach by offering advanced features that remove a lot of the manual tasks associated with clienteling; for example, a clienteling app like Endear can help you identify which customers to contact by keeping their purchase history updated in real time.

Before the advent of the apps, getting to know customers and understanding how best to meet their needs was done through more analog resources, such as shopping logs and phone calls.

But with a clienteling app, salespeople can easily keep up with clients' buying behavior, their transactional history, and more. Retail outlets then use this information to engage with customers over remote channels rather than having to rely on customers walking into the store.

A good clienteling app should detect hidden audiences, provide efficient methods of outreach, seamless remote shopping, transparent performance data, and cross-store organization.

A clienteling app should help both the retailer and customer achieve their goals. Here are some key features to consider as you explore the market:

• No clienteling app is worth using if it can’t sync data into your system in real time. Expecting users to manually keep up information about your customers and their activity will result in an incomplete picture of who those customers are. Learn about the integrations that make this sync possible in Endear.
• Your clienteling app should keep inventory updated and help you avoid recommending products that are not in stock.
• Your app should enable dynamic messaging that allows for each recipient to receive a message tailored to their unique profile.
• Your app should encourage two-way conversation. A good clienteling app will let customers chat with your sales team over any channel that suits them.
• A good clienteling app will allow teams to coordinate their outreach so that no one reaches out to the same person
• The app you choose should provide accurate insights on how your clienteling strategy is paying off

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology that keeps track of all customer interactions with your team in order to make it easy to improve and extend your relationships with customers. A Clienteling app should offer a CRM that’s specifically designed for b2c businesses.

A Clienteling App should offer a messaging platform tailored to retail sales teams, allowing salespeople to chat with customers via a variety of channels such as text, email and Whatsapp.

Clienteling apps should offer insights that enable a deeper understanding of customer behaviors and preferences.

A clienteling app should eliminate the need to reach out to each individual client manually. With the right tasks management system and messaging platform, your clienteling app can take repetitive activities off employees' plates and allow them to focus on more important sales opportunities that require a human's touch.

You need a clienteling app that moves your company forward and increases sales. That includes asking yourself how the price and pricing model of the app you choose work for you today and tomorrow. Also ask yourself how the app takes into consideration how many users you will need as your company grows, and the various ways for your teams to access the app.

Let's look at some examples of the most popular Clienteling Apps on Shopify.

Endear’s Shopify-Plus Certified Clienteling app equips your salespeople with a full suite of tools and data to drive sales in-store and online. This App offers a CRM designed for retail, smart and personalized messaging, and omnichannel sales tracking. Endear also allows you to send custom product recommendations through lookbooks and track the performance of your salespersons.

Endear has changed the way hundreds of stores worldwide are clienteling with customers, and brands can access numerous key customer data points to see a holistic view of their customers and connect accordingly. Endear integrates with Shopify, Shopify Plus, Heartland Retail, Teamwork Commerce, KWI, and many more.

With Boutiq, you’ll be able to bring your sales team online and enable them to video chat with online shoppers in need of 1-1 attention. With Boutiq as a clienteling resource, you’ll be able to build high-touch relationships with your online customers, ensuring they have access to a salesperson the same way in-store shoppers do.

Superphone is a powerful SMS marketing app that allows personalized messaging via SMS at scale. Superphone connects and leverages your Shopify data to improve the performance of your messages, and works across the globe. This app also allows you to text with customers 1-1, making it a great option for clienteling.