Businesses need to be aware of the evolving landscape of customer engagement. With technological advancements and changing customer expectations, companies must adapt and navigate the ever-changing environment to retain customers and drive growth. This is something that we here at Pipeliner strive to achieve as well as try to help others do the same.
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The Fundamentals of Customer Engagement
Modern marketers recognize that delivering a great customer experience is just as important as delivering a product that works as advertised. With constant connectivity and endless technological advances, customer expectations have skyrocketed. Customers now expect to interact with brands on multiple digital channels, consume content their way, and receive prompt responses to support inquiries.
Crafting an interesting and engaging customer experience is a challenging task that requires a highly skilled team equipped with the appropriate resources. However, businesses that excel in this area can reap significant benefits, such as increased customer retention, loyalty, and referrals, which can lead to rapid growth.
What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement is a measure of how effectively a business is building relationships with its customers across online and offline channels. It is a barometer for how invested people are in a brand, which can be a strong predictor of retention, loyalty, and advocacy. Customer engagement is important because customers are the driving force behind business growth. When customers feel a positive emotional connection to a brand, they’re inclined to spend more, remain loyal, and refer the company to friends or colleagues. It’s thus imperative that businesses provide value at every customer touchpoint. We will explore customer engagement types in the following sub-headings:
Brand engagement
Brand engagement is the process of building emotional connections between a brand and its customers. It’s about creating a relationship that extends beyond transactions and builds a sense of loyalty and trust. There are many ways to engage customers with a brand, including creating compelling content, offering exceptional customer service, and building a strong brand identity.
Agent engagement
In addition to customer engagement, businesses must also focus on agent engagement. This involves providing support and resources to customer service representatives and ensuring they feel engaged and empowered to deliver excellent service.
One key aspect of agent engagement is training. Investing in ongoing training and development can help agents feel confident and capable in their roles. This can lead to better job satisfaction and improved performance. Additionally, providing agents with the right tools and resources can help them better assist customers and resolve issues efficiently.
Product engagement
Product engagement refers to the level of interaction a customer has with a product or service. It is a key indicator of whether or not a customer will continue to use a product, and whether or not they will become loyal advocates for the brand. Product engagement can be measured through a variety of metrics, such as time spent using the product, frequency of use, and product satisfaction.
Businesses can increase product engagement by creating products that are easy to use, intuitive, and provide clear value to customers. They can also incorporate customer feedback into product development, ensuring that the product meets the needs and preferences of its users. By fostering a strong sense of product engagement, businesses can increase customer loyalty and generate positive word-of-mouth advertising.
Customer engagement trends
With the rapid advancement of technology, customer engagement trends are continually evolving. Here are some of the latest customer engagement trends that businesses need to be aware of:
Personalizing customer experiences
Many businesses are concerned that without access to third-party data, they will not be able to create effective marketing messages for their customers. However, it is possible to still provide personalized experiences by utilizing first-party data. By collecting and analyzing data that customers have willingly shared, businesses can tailor their approach to fit each individual. This effort can be worth it, as studies have shown that personalization significantly contributes to profitability and that customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. For instance, nine out of ten top-performing marketers agree that personalization significantly contributes to their profitability and studies have shown that customers are willing to pay up to a 16% premium for a better customer experience.
Respecting consumer privacy
As data streams in from multiple online and offline channels, sensitive information fragments permeate across ecosystems. Consumers are increasingly aware of how their data is being used, and now expect to control how businesses use it. Governments are also recognizing the importance of consumer privacy, and are imposing strict privacy practices. Compliance with these regulations is important to avoid penalties, which can cost businesses a significant chunk of money. As a result, businesses must request permission to track customer data and must lean into first-party data to build direct relationships with their customers.
Omnichannel engagement
Omnichannel engagement involves providing a seamless customer experience across all channels, including social media, email, phone, and in-person interactions. Customers expect to be able to interact with companies through their preferred channels, and businesses that fail to provide an omnichannel experience risk losing customers to their competitors. To achieve effective omnichannel engagement, businesses need to have a comprehensive view of their customers’ interactions across channels.
Businesses can also utilize automation tools, such as chatbots and marketing automation, to provide consistent messaging and support across channels. Chatbots can provide customers with quick and efficient support, while marketing automation can ensure that customers receive relevant and timely communications across channels.
Customer self-service
Many customers prefer to find solutions to their problems on their own rather than having to contact customer support. Providing self-service options, such as knowledge bases and chatbots, can improve the customer experience and reduce the workload on customer support teams. Providing self-service options such as knowledge bases, chatbots, and IVR systems can improve the customer experience and reduce the workload on customer support teams.
It’s important to ensure that self-service options are easy to use and provide value to customers. Best practices include making self-service options easy to find, providing clear instructions, ensuring that options are up-to-date, and providing multiple channels for self-service.
Emphasis on customer feedback
Customer feedback is a valuable source of information that can help businesses improve their products and services. Not only can it help identify areas for improvement, but it can also shed light on what is working well and what customers appreciate most. Companies that actively seek out customer feedback and take action on it are more likely to build strong customer relationships and loyalty. Businesses can gather customer feedback using surveys, focus groups, and social media listening.
It is important to not only acknowledge customer concerns but also implement changes based on their feedback. Continuous improvement, making small, incremental changes over time, can help avoid overwhelming customers and ensure changes are being made thoughtfully. Transparency with customers about feedback and plans for improvement can build trust and loyalty, demonstrating commitment to continuous improvement. Customer feedback can improve products, services, and the overall customer experience, leading to increased customer retention and growth.
Social media engagement
Social media has become a critical channel for customer engagement, and businesses need to have a strong social media presence to connect with their customers. Customers expect companies to have a presence on social media platforms and to respond promptly to inquiries and complaints. Companies that fail to engage with customers on social media risk damaging their reputation and losing customers. To effectively engage with customers on social media, businesses need to have a clear strategy in place. This involves identifying relevant channels, creating engaging content, and providing customer support. Additionally, businesses can leverage social media to build relationships with customers and monitor performance through analytics tools.
Overall, social media engagement is a critical component of customer engagement in 2024 and beyond, as it can help build loyal customer bases and drive growth.
Digitizing customer engagement
Consumers nowadays expect brands to engage with them across different types of media and on the channels of their choosing. For instance, the 2022 State of Customer Engagement Report by Twilio revealed that 78% of consumers now use video communication to connect with their brands. Similarly, Zendesk found that consumers expect to interact with the same customer support agent regardless of the channel they use. Businesses that engage with their customers via multiple channels are seeing benefits, as omnichannel shoppers are worth 30% more during their lifetimes than customers who shop from a single channel. Given the stakes, it’s no surprise that top-performing businesses are quick to adapt to these evolving trends.
Customer engagement strategies
In today’s competitive market, it’s crucial to have an effective customer engagement strategy to stand out from the crowd. Here are some strategies that can help boost customer engagement:
Make data-driven decisions
Many businesses make the mistake of relying on intuition when it comes to customer engagement strategies. However, the key to rapid growth is data-driven decision-making. By analyzing historical customer data and using experiments to validate ideas, businesses can be confident that their tactics will resonate with customers and drive growth.
Provide a consistent experience
It is crucial to offer customers a reliable and uniform experience to establish trust. Tools such as Twilio and Segment enable businesses to identify customers who interact with them across multiple channels and platforms. This helps ensure that the same person who contacts the business via phone is the same one who reaches out via email. By accurately identifying customers, businesses can communicate with them more effectively and tailor their approach to fit the individual’s needs.
Curate a personalized journey
Modern customers don’t want to be treated like just another number. Instead, they crave unique relationships with the brands they purchase from. However, good personalization goes beyond simply using a customer’s name in an email. Smart companies customize the entire customer experience based on each individual’s behavior.
To achieve this level of personalization, businesses need to utilize a customer data platform such as Segment to track and mobilize customer data, along with a communications platform such as Twilio to deliver omnichannel campaigns.
Use customer feedback to improve
Customer feedback is a crucial aspect of successful businesses. It can help improve products and provide a better customer experience. It is important to regularly schedule customer calls, be open to feedback, and have a plan for implementing changes promptly.
Work toward instant response times
The importance of instant response times for customer engagement is highlighted, as customers expect the same level of service online and on the go as they would receive in a physical store. It is recommended to hire enough customer support professionals and empower them with the necessary tools to achieve best-in-class response times and avoid frustrating customers.
Be conversational with your customers
Top-performing brands use conversational language that resonates with their customers, and they share their company values to establish an emotional connection. Today’s consumers and business professionals expect a human experience from the brands they interact with, so it’s important to follow suit.
Get the right tools for the job
To effectively implement many of the practices outlined, it is necessary to both communicate with customers and utilize their data to inform those communications. Therefore, it is recommended that businesses adopt tools that allow them to track customer behavior, analyze patterns, and personalize communications. Examples of such tools include customer data platforms, analytics software, and APIs that can be used to build custom communication solutions.
Measure and optimize your performance
It is a common saying that you can only manage what you measure, and this rings true for businesses as well. Without tracking progress toward business goals, it is impossible to improve performance. Therefore, it is important to track the right customer engagement metrics and prioritize optimization of the program and tactics to achieve desired results.
How to solve customer engagement challenges
Some major challenges in customer engagement include constant connectivity, with an estimated 78% of global citizens having access to a smartphone, and channel saturation, with online channels becoming increasingly saturated. To address these challenges, it’s critical to deliver a delightful customer experience and tailor messages that resonate with ideal customers.
As technology becomes more accessible, customer expectations are rising. With the widespread use of mobile devices, customers expect instant responses to their inquiries. To keep up with these expectations, businesses must adapt and improve their customer service.
One challenge is the abundance of customer data spread across various tools, resulting in organizational silos. To avoid making missteps, businesses need a comprehensive view of their customers. Customer data platforms, such as Twilio Segment, can provide a single source of truth by connecting all data sources and destinations and aggregating all of a customer’s data under their own profile. This leads to better business decisions and more effective customer interactions.
Customer engagement metrics
Net promoter score (NPS) is a type of survey that measures customer loyalty and the likelihood of them recommending a product or service to others. The survey asks customers to rate how likely they are to recommend a product or service on a scale of 0 to 10. Based on their responses, customers can be divided into three groups: Promoters, who give a score of 9 or 10; Passives, who give a score of 7 or 8; and Detractors, who give a score of 0 to 6.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a survey that measures customer satisfaction with a brand or product on a 10-point scale. Customer effort score (CES) measures the ease of interacting with a brand on a 7-point scale. Product stickiness measures how often users return to a product, indicating the value it provides over time. Customer reviews provide qualitative feedback on the customer experience and can be excellent for referrals and word-of-mouth awareness. Positive reviews are as influential as personal recommendations for a business according to BrightLocal.
Conclusion
In conclusion, customer engagement is a critical aspect of business success in 2024 and beyond. By understanding the evolving landscape of customer expectations and utilizing the latest technology and strategies, businesses can build strong relationships with their customers and drive growth. From personalized experiences to conversational AI to respecting consumer privacy, there are many trends and strategies to keep in mind. By measuring and optimizing performance through metrics such as NPS and CSAT, businesses can ensure they are providing value to their customers at every touchpoint. Customer engagement is not just a buzzword, but a fundamental aspect of business that can make or break success in today’s economy.
