Don’t Just Make Sales! Win Lifetime Customers

Customer Engagement for Customer Success

I’m a frequent customer of a cosmetic retailer in Kenya. They are always checking in to see how I’m liking my products and if I’m running out. I like that they refer to me by name and they  remember my birthday every year! Cool right?

Note that…

In the past, simply providing a quality product or service may have been considered enough but in today’s world, this is not sufficient to attract and retain loyal customers. If you want to run a successful organization, engaging with customers is critical.

Customer engagement has evolved in recent years as companies explore various ways to appeal to customers and retain them. It requires continuous efforts aimed at genuinely connecting with the audience and building lasting business relationships.

 

What is Customer Engagement?

It is the ongoing cultivation of a relationship between the company and consumer that goes far beyond the transaction. It’s an intentional, consistent approach by a company that provides value at every customer interaction, hence creating and increasing customer loyalty.

It means optimizing a company’s team structure, operations, and technology to create a connected feedback loop with customers.

This is important because as a business, there is a need to stay informed about customers’ evolving needs, maintain and build their brand integrity, while making ethical use of customer data to help customers have the best experience.

Customer engagement begins with the first interaction that a customer has with your brand and goes even after the purchase. When customers interact with content put up on social media, website, email marketing, blogs, it is a clear sign that they are engaging with your brand.

It is important for an organization to also consider offering their customers a cross-channel experience. This gives the customers the choice to decide where they engage with your brand and by giving them a choice, you will be able to identify the type of interaction and content they find valuable.

This in turn leads them to develop a stronger emotional bond with your brand and by delivering content and experiences that add value to the customer, you are able to then create meaningful engagements.

When customers feel that they are getting more than just a product or service from a brand, they tend to connect to that brand.

For all businesses, increased sales is of course the main goal. However, customer engagement offers many more benefits that ultimately position a business for long-term success and enhance the return on investment.

 

So What Are the Benefits of Customer Engagement?

Improves Customer Relationships

The survival of businesses has always highly relied on the relationships between a brand and the customer but in this modern age where technology has taken over most the processes that had human interaction, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain relationships.

And while technology has made it easier to market and reach new and more customers, it has become challenging to retain customer relationships. It is therefore essential to keep regular communication with customers across all channels to help build and keep the rapport.

Engaging customers between and beyond purchases will help strengthen their emotional connection with your business. Stronger connections between your customer and the brand will go a long way to help retain your hard-won customers.

 

Increases Loyalty and Customer Retention

Constant meaningful engagements with customers allows a business to identify what your customers feel about your product or service, the qualities that they value, and any areas that need improvement in order to provide a better experience.

By addressing this, customers feel heard and appreciated, which in turn helps protect against customer churn. As a business, when you show genuine interest in your customers, they will be more likely to buy from you again.

 

Cross-selling and Upselling Opportunities

As a business, when you have a loyal customer base, it makes it easier to interest these customers and sell to them a product or service with additional features. It is known that it’s much harder to sell to a new customer but you stand a better chance to sell to an existing customer because they know and trust you.

As a business owner, using the information you have about your customers, you can be able to tell a trend. For instance, which products or services are usually purchased together and recommend the same to another customer.

For instance, have you gone to order a meal from your favorite food App and just before completing your burger order, there is a suggestion to add a soda or dessert to go with that?

Streamline Purchase Cycles

As a business, you are operating in a modern world where technology has hugely taken over and the engagement channels or platforms now make use of Artificial Intelligent (AI) technology and data.

This has enabled businesses to automate interactions and repetitive tasks and create a personalized experience that encourages a prospect to make a purchase.

For instance, websites or Apps now store information pertaining details of the buyer after the first purchase and this makes the purchase quicker and easier the next time a customer has to buy something because they do not need to re-enter their information such as delivery location.

Customer engagement helps in anticipating needs, and creating custom, timely responses that address common questions and concerns. And with technology, a business can easily retarget potential customers, convert and retain leads while shortening the buying process.

 

Grow the Customer Base

Consistent customer engagement helps convert potential leads to customers or, at the very least, create interest in your business and offerings. Many businesses will offer incentives and freebies to show appreciation in the quest to retain customers.

And while all these approaches will help to attract potential leads, as a business, you want to ensure you’re also providing value in your product or service offering. Businesses that give customers relevant content that answers the customers’ needs, see a significant increase in users.

As those users grow more familiar with your brand, it will eventually become the go-to choice and the product they seek out over competitors.

 

Customer Engagement Strategies

Let’s now dive into some of the strategies that a business can adopt to improve customer engagement.

1. Identify Your Ideal Customer & Their Journey

When it comes to customer engagement it is important to know who your customer is and how they interact with your brand. You need to identify your customers’ preferred engagement styles and understand what they value in both a buying process and their personal life.

Getting to know their needs, age, income range and more will help discover what motivates your customer which in turn will help you create a buyer persona that accurately directs your strategy.

The customer journey is equally important, mapping this out enables your business to identify all important touchpoints, bottlenecks and challenges your customers may meet. This will help you find out more about their needs and behavior as well as identify opportunities for engagement.

 

2. Offer Valuable Content

Becoming aware of who your customer is, allows you as a business owner to tailor your content to their interests and needs. Today’s customer is empowered and is not limited in terms of options, so to ensure that your brand stands out above the rest is by making sure that the content strategy is customer-driven.

Having the customer in mind and in the center of everything you do as a business, helps identify the customer’s pain points and challenges and consequently providing solutions to these issues.

As a business, you can take advantage of content marketing which includes blog posts, webinars, e-books, videos and other channels that position you as an expert in your industry.

However, it is important to note that videos are outperforming for content marketing purposes as compared to written content. For social media such as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, videos are becoming frequently used because they are short and catchy and for time to come, they will continue to be commonly used for content marketing.

Your content should be valuable to your target customers and include information they can’t get from anyone else. In other words, cater your content to your audience’s needs while injecting your brand voice.

 

3. Personalization of Service

It is such a nice feeling for a customer when they feel seen, acknowledged and that the brand they patronize, knows who they are. Customers want products or services that are tailored to them and their needs.

A business can offer personalized service by simply addressing the customer by their name on an email, having access to their purchasing history can help a sales agent make a recommendation of a complimentary or new product or service.

A customer care agent can have the history of the issues the customer has been having and instead of starting the conversation with “how can I help you?” it can become “I see you’ve been having this issue with the item you bought, let me help.

 

 

 

4. Adopt a Customer Centric Approach

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers to help you identify potential challenges and benefits from their perspective. As a business, you want to ensure that you are answering to the needs of your customers and to do this, you need to listen to the customers.

Everyone working in the company needs to understand that the customer is the hero at every stage of the buying process. Creating this culture in an organization ensures that you are providing a memorable experience before and after the transaction. Not only is this a sure way to convert leads to customers, but it also builds brand loyalty.

 

5. Collect Customer Feedback

In order to determine how customers are responding to your product or service, it is important to set up milestones and key performance indicators. Through the feedback, you are able to identify if there is a need to make improvements.

All feedback is important be it a simple comment on a social media post, a direct message, an email, through a survey sent, the more knowledgeable you are about your customer wants, the more satisfied they will be and want to engage more with your brand.

 

6. Utilize the Right Tools

As a business grows, customers can fall through the cracks but with the right automation and communication tools, you can streamline your engagement process and track progress in one platform. It is now possible to centralize all activities throughout the customer lifecycle and create a seamless customer experience across all channels.

As business owners, you must realize that the competition is no longer against the store a few blocks away that is offering a similar product or service but rather, you are competing with every other experience that a customer has in different industries.

Due to access to information we have established that the modern customer has so much power now. Social media has given a platform to every user to air their views be it negative or positive. Hence, getting to identify your customers and understanding their needs has become critical to success, no matter your industry.

In this light…

Every business must go beyond just making sales and focus more on engaging customers in a way that is not outrightly transactional. How is your business engaging it’s customers?

Would you rather make a sale or a lifetime customer?