Everyone talks about customer engagement, but how many people truly understand what it means to have good customer engagement? More importantly, how many people know how to improve and grow customer engagement with their company? Discover why customer engagement is so important and learn some tips you can start implementing right now to improve your customer engagement.
Why is customer engagement important?
The technical definition of customer engagement is the communication and connection between your company and its customers. However, a true understanding of customer engagement goes deeper than that. Customer engagement is the emotional connection a customer has with your business. It’s the reason a customer is loyal to your company and comes back again and again instead of going to a competitor. It’s also the process you use to build, nurture, and manage this relationship with your customers.
Customer engagement strategy
Once you realize how important customer engagement is, you now want a good customer engagement strategy to help keep your customers loyal. In the end, a good strategy is all about making your customer feel loved, unique, and appreciated. After all, if people like your brand, they’ll probably come back again. However, if people love your brand, they’ll always pick you over your competitors, and they’ll likely tell their family and friends about you as well.
When you’re looking to build your customer engagement strategy, the first place to start is your customer insight. Don’t assume you know who you customers are and what they want. Actually do a study so you have a firm grasp of your target market. Now take a look at your brand identity. Make sure you have a clearly defined brand that’s consistent with what your customers want.
Next, go where your customers are. If your customers prefer one social media platform over the others, make sure you’re on there. After that, whether it’s your social media posts, advertising, or sales pitches, make sure your message is always on-brand. Finally, be sure your employees embrace your brand, your message, and are always looking out for your customer’s best interests.
With this strategy, you can convert more of your target market into loyal, paying customers. When you have these steps down, you can build your strategy to include some of the following examples.
Use your social media channels
While your social media channels are great for connecting you with your customers, they’re even better for helping you engage with them. One way to do this is by sharing customer reviews on your social media channels. People like reading customer reviews because they’re from real people who have actually used the product or service. Additionally, when you’re using your social media accounts, don’t talk at your customers. Instead, listen to what they have to say, find out what their problems are, and do something to solve those problems.
Personalize your outreach
Content and marketing pitches bombard your customers every day. If you truly want to stand out and show your customers how much you care about them, you need to make your outreach more personalized. When your customer feels like you’ve created an advertisement that’s just for him or her, you’re more likely to get better engagement. To do so, consider creating personalized welcome emails or campaigns based on a customer’s location.
Make a question and answer session
Handling questions and answers when all business was completed through a brick and mortar store was easy. Today, more business and interaction has moved online and your customers are thousands of miles away, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t handle questions and answers to help improve customer engagement. In fact, there are a few ways you can handle this. First, you can create a spot on your website where potential customers can ask verified buyers a question about the product they’re looking at.
Another option is to create a question and answer video to post on your social media platforms. Simply put out a request for questions your customers have and collect some of the most popular responses. Then record you or one of your employees answering these questions and post the recording online. You can even advertise a time and day when you’ll go live on social media to answer questions in real-time as they come in from your customers.
Get your customers involved
Perhaps one of the best ways to engage with customers is to get them involved in collaboration and product inspiration. You can have your customers vote on your next product, ask them to fill out surveys to get a better idea of their interests, or share their social media posts on your pages. You can even have them create their own versions of your product, such as Domino’s Pizza Mogul campaign or Lay’s Do Us A Flavor potato chip flavor contest.
Make your brand feel more human
While it seems complicated to make an inanimate brand human, if you can create the feeling that your customers are interacting with a real person, they will feel more connected. One way you can try this is by adding personality to microcontent. These small parts of your online brand, such as social media descriptions or newsletter sign-up forms, are the perfect spot to insert some personality.
Another option to consider is shraing stories about yourself or your employees that are interesting and that your customers can relate to. Talk about how you started the company, how you like to stay active and involved in your community, or create articles or videos introducing yourself and your team.
Make customer service your top priority
Take a look at companies who have very loyal customers and one trait will begin to stand out: they all take customer service very seriously. Make sure your employees are always kind and polite when working with your customers. Customers won’t hesitate to switch if they think they can get better customer service somewhere else. Additionally, make sure you respond promptly to all calls, emails, and social media questions.
Online shoe retailer Zappos is known for their top-notch customer service. CEO Tony Hsieh says the company doesn’t enforce call time tracking because it’s more important for representatives to spend extra time making sure customers are happy, instead of focusing on getting through each call.
Offer real-time benefits
Instant gratification is more important than ever. The faster your customers can get their hands on what they want, the happier they’ll be. You can send out geo-targeted ads with a buy one get one free deal or offer a free product to anyone who checks in using their social media account.
A great example of this is a water filter company that asks customers if they want reminders sent when it’s time to order a new filter. The customer simply fills in their filter type and how often they want reminded, and then a helpful email arrives in their inbox when it’s time to order new filters. They click on the link, buy the filter replacement, have it shipped to their home, and they never have to worry about running out of filters.
Offer rewards
Everyone likes to get something back, so offering rewards, coupons, or a loyalty program is an ideal way to not only get customers to come back, but to also improve their engagement. Even better, if you offer a special coupon for customers who leave a review, you get twice the customer engagement involvement. You can also offer coupons to customers who haven’t shopped with you in a while, as a reward after they make a purchase, or as part of your personalized engagement strategy.
Starbucks has a good example of an effective loyalty program. The first tier of the program offers a free birthday reward, the ability to order ahead and pay by phone, free in-store refills, exclusive access to member events and offers, and the ability to earn reward stars with each purchase. Customers can also upgrade to gold status in the rewards program and receive a personalized card and special rewards. This type of loyalty program motivates customers to keep coming back to Starbucks and earn more rewards.
Whether you offer a product or service, customers are the lifeblood of your business. If you’re looking to improve your customer engagement so you can create a loyal fan base and increase sales, make sure your customers know how valuable they are by using these strategies.
