According to results published on a recent Gallup survey, actively engaged customers make nearly 44% more visits every year to their preferred consumer electronics retailer compared to those who are actively disengaged. On a similar note, in the banking industry, actively engaged customers brought 37% more annual revenues as compared to the disengaged customers.
There is no one way to fully understand customer engagement (the Gallup survey defines fully engaged customers as those who are emotionally attached and rationally loyal). However, there is sufficient evidence to show that engagement increases when customers identify the company they do business with as one that is perfect for them, consider the company as one that always delivers on their promise and are therefore proud to be their customer.
How does one go about building a business that customers associate with? A lot of this has to do with great service and quality products. But that alone may not be sufficient to “engage” the customers. With the proliferation of the digital platform, businesses now have access to a variety of tools to make customer engagement easy and efficient.
Unify Customer Interaction
There are multiple channels of customer interaction today – call centers, social media, email, apps, etc. This often leads to interaction over multiple channels that is chaotic and unhelpful for customers. By unifying the coversations carried over multiple channels, your business can ensure that all helpdesk and support staff may have access to previous interactions between the customer and the business – this helps the customer fix their issue sooner and thus makes them more engaged and loyal.
Use Digital Media To Enhance Experience
In his article about digital marketing, Neil Patel writes about ‘enhanced offline marketing’ – this is basically making use of the electronic medium for offline marketing purposes. A great example Neil shares to explain this is the use of iPads in restaurants to allow customers to not only look up the food products and their prices, but also perhaps use the medium to provide a digital experience of what the food will look and feel like. Such forms of engagement often helps increase interaction and thus the sale volume.
Bringing Down The Transactional Nature Of Relationship With Social Media
Since the early days of trading, the relationship between a business and a customer has been that of buy and sell. There have however been a lot of evolution in the past hundred years that have been targeted at changing this relationship to be more of that between a buyer and a trusted expert. But with the advent of social media, this relationship has evolved much more. Today, customers want to see businesses take themselves less seriously and be a ‘friend’ or ‘follower’ just like the hundreds of real people these customers interact with through digital media. This requires businesses to use more conversational language, memes and generally focus on becoming a virtual friend to the customer. This creates an off-business engagement that directly translates into more sales and revenues.
