Clienteling is a technique used by retail sales associates to establish long-term relationships with key customers based on data about their preferences, behaviors and purchases.
While at its core, clienteling is a sales technique, the term is commonly used today to describe the related assisted selling software tools used to support relationship-building activities between store associates and their customers.
[5] Software-based clienteling has been said to have the advantage of collecting data about clients across different interaction channels in a searchable and retrievable database for later use.
[6] Clienteling software may also provide digital tools on mobile devices or fixed workstations aimed at enabling retailers to establish long-lasting learning relationships with their customers.
[2][12] Clienteling can also be an effective means of selling excess inventory without resorting to discounting by pairing products with the right consumers, using their past purchases to predict what they are likely want to buy.