Customer engagement solutions and strategies are the key objectives that need to align with the vision of your organization.
This is because according to research done on customer experience management it shows that more than even 63 percent of consumers say the businesses must consider getting to know their customers better as their top priority in modern times.
Therefore, having a strong focus on engaging with the consumers and customers of your brand and thereby delivering appropriate customer experience across all touchpoints in the customer journey should be the prime objective your business should aim to achieve nowadays.
In the era of the internet digital customer experience is an important part of any businesses’ strategy that contributes to the success (or even failure at times) of the overall brand experience of any company, since if the experience is good, it is imperative that customers are most likely to become loyal customers and repeat purchasers of your offerings.
Hence in order to meet the demanding customer experience of modern times, having a sound customer engagement solution and strategies is essential for all businesses, especially small businesses and startups who are more in need of rapid growth.
What is a customer engagement strategy?
Now for a layman, customer experience strategy is defined as building long-term relationships with the customers by understanding their journey with a brand and focusing on how they interact with their business across multiple interactions- both online and offline.
According to research done on this subject, it has been studied that more than 72 percent of businesses believe that improving customer experience using customer experience solutions and tools like an easy to use CRM software is their top priority nowadays.
This is because, supporting customers through digital engagement channels aids in fostering not only brand awareness, but it even helps in building strong customer loyalty and nurture the customer-business relationship for acquisition to the retention of the customers.
Hence it is needless to say that brands that create a customer engagement plan which focuses more than other things on value creation are the ones that can provide a meaningful and end-to-end customer experience, which can be acquired by providing great content and prompt support to the customers.
Hence broadly speaking, Customer-Brand-Engagement (CBE) or Customer Engagement (CE) is a customer’s relationship with any business, which explores the quality of that relationship (both positive and negative) and how customer participation occurs or how often it happens with the brand.
Therefore, the dimensions of the CE can include:
What does customer engagement look like?
Before we discuss the six ‘no regret’ moves of customer engagement solutions, let us understand that CE can be both general and also selective.
This means customers might get engaged with your brand and business at different levels.
For example, for some customers, it might happen at the product level, like a new business CRM buyer joining a cloud-based CRM adopter’s group on Facebook, or for others, it is at the level of the brand, like an Apple enthusiast patronizing their preferred brand’s promotions and offerings.
Customer experience can also be quite abstract or highly specific like a consumer expressing their preference for Visa or Master Card or a customer patronizing a particular branch of a retail brand in their region because it is better managed or more welcoming than others.
Therefore this being said, here are six examples of what world-class customer engagement solutions might look like in practice, which includes:
1. Resolving a complaint
An unhappy customer reaches out to ask or provide feedback for a problem to be remedied. Now, irrespective of whether they lodge their complaint via email or in a public forum can be a telling measure of the customer’s sentiment and loyalty for your brand. This is because, particularly if a customer cares enough to make a complain, it can be considered as a valuable break to close the experience gap and gain the loyalty of the customer by exceeding their expectations.
2. Responding with a comment on Facebook
A customer sees an ad for an offering they have recently bought and might add a comment along with the lines of “this is exactly the thing I was telling about Patricia!” or “bought two of these but have no idea how to use.”
Now, this is a word-of-mouth advertisement that reflects positivity or negativity and for the brand, it can act as a form of social proof, which can help bring more engagements, if responded promptly.
3. Answering reviews on a third-party site
A customer waits for hours on hold, and while the minutes pass, leave a one-star review on a third-party site like TrustPilot, or G2.
Now in this scenario, even though the customer might be a Detractor of the brand, however unlike social media they are not sharing their opinions with their relatives and friends in their sphere of influence, and are rather doing it anonymously, which can be resolved with proactive support to the customer from the brand.
4. Encouraging participation in loyalty programs
A customer signs up for a brand for a loyalty card that they wish to collect for harvesting points on future purchases. Now the moment a customer signs up and enjoys collecting points and achieving rewards, it becomes a secondary motivation on the part of the customer in itself.
It is natural, they will choose your brand above others since they can collect points with you and not with others.
5. Asking for suggestions, ideas, and requests on a brand’s social spaces
A loyal customer of your brand, comments of your Instagram post asking when and if you will be restocking a product they love.
They might even make contributions like “can we have a gift set with this” or “would love to see this in red”, which shows that the customers are interested in providing ideas and suggestion which if answered properly and at the right moment can increase your engagement with the customers and bring in more revenue.
6. Promote the use of online support and customer service
A subscriber to a SaaS platform like QuickBooks CRM software or a CRM that integrates easily with online accounting software like QuickBooks wants to know how to use the tool to solve a specific data transfer problem. Nevertheless, unable to find the answer in the product’s knowledge base, the consumer contacts customer service via live chat to ask for suggestions and is referred to a product specialist who answers the question.
This is an example of somebody engaging genuinely with a service they have already paid for, and is therefore expected to have an enhanced experience and increased customer engagements as a consequence if they are responded instantly.
Conclusion
Remember customer engagement is the ultimate key to conversion and upselling opportunities in this digital marketplace.
This is because irrespective of how good is your offer or how deeply your products and services can benefit the customers you as a brand need to instigate and nudge the customers and make you home in their minds, and the only way you can do it in business is making your customers get engaged with you using effective techniques and also including them in your marketing strategies.
Therefore this post is all about helping your small business to get a grip on these six customer engagement solutions and strategies from us as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, which can help to bring in more customers who shall remain loyal to your brand.
