The face of customer engagement has changed. Breakneck advances in social and mobile continue to feed customer expectations for real-time response from brands. Here are three tips for better navigating the modern customer landscape.
For years, marketers have pushed customers to destinations of their own choosing. The rules of the game have changed and in this day and age, it’s less about the destination and more about the journey – the customer journey. Today, engaging customers en route and providing them with relevant and timely communications based upon their preferences is the key to unlocking the secret of the modern customer landscape. Akin to a two-way, continual stream of dialogue, the once experimental model has fast become the norm. If your brand freezes at the mere thought of Twitter, Facebook and the blogging community, this post is for you.
The success of modern business relies heavily on the ability to effectively engage with customers across a variety of channels at any one time. However, building such a relationship by delivering customized and relevant information to the right device represents a major challenge. A balance of what you are selling and what the customer is looking for is also required. The reason for this shift is simple: communication options are sprawling and unlimited amongst today’s key demographics and customers have no issue changing brand allegiance. Furthermore, it’s difficult to reach an audience with little tolerance for mass marketing and push advertising, unless it’s fast, relevant and in a language they understand.
Identifying this shift in the landscape is well and good, but addressing these new requirements is easier said than done.
Below are three key tips for creating and fostering meaningful customer relationships:
• Customize for Viewing
Customers are uninterested in content or platforms designed for websites and simply resized for mobile devices. In most cases, they won’t even attempt to read or engage and one cannot blame them as customers shouldn’t have to settle for anything less than a best-in-class experience at any point of their journey. Broken communication and conversations can be terminal for a brand.
• Effectively Manage Communication Channels
Nothing can tarnish a reputation quicker than sending irrelevant information to an influential member of the Twitter community and blogosphere. Today’s tech savvy customer is not afraid of naming and shaming. One negative post can have dire consequences for a brand’s reputation and lead to customer defection. Learning to properly manage these channels through proper technology, process and training is essential.
• Empower Your Employees to be Successful
In contemporary business environments marketing and sales control investment in CRM – not IT – and they are responsible for achieving such critical goals as customer retention and growth. Companies with rigid legacy solutions often find their CRM systems incapable of meeting their modern needs. To enhance customer engagement capabilities, empower your employees with the tools needed to produce relevant, personalized experiences across all customer communications channels.
Companies are treading a finer line than ever before with their target markets and customer experience is often now the only source of competitive brand advantage to drive customer loyalty, enhance brand reputation and drive revenue growth. These areas represent huge challenges for organizations, but with every challenge there is also opportunity, and for companies willing to evolve the benefits are substantial.
