{"id":116395,"date":"2023-04-14T16:27:29","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T16:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessyield.com\/?p=116395"},"modified":"2023-04-14T16:27:32","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T16:27:32","slug":"customer-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessyield.com\/customer-relationships\/customer-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT: Definition, Strategy, Platform & Importance","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of the time, when we want to improve our relationships with customers, we think about service and support instead of customer engagement. But this is more than just good customer service. It’s not enough to make customers happy and try to get them to spend more money with your brand. In fact, this may make them feel transactional and less important to your business. Instead, you should make the customer’s experience better to make them more loyal to your brand. In this blog post, we will discuss everything you need to know about customer engagement, including the strategy, platform, solution, and why it is important. <\/p>

Customer Engagement<\/span><\/h2>

Customer engagement is the ongoing process of building a relationship with a customer that goes beyond the transaction. It’s a planned, consistent way for a company to give customers value at every interaction, which makes them more loyal.<\/p>

Customer engagement is often confused with customer satisfaction and experience. There are some similarities between the three, but they are still different. You must realize that “customer experience” refers to the impression that customers have of your business based on everything they see, hear, or learn about it. We’ll go into much more detail about these ideas later.<\/p>

Customer Engagement Is a Step Beyond Customer Satisfaction<\/h3>

Customer satisfaction, on the other hand, measures how much customers enjoy or detest your goods or services. Both are important when interacting with customers, but listening is important to build a relationship and offer a custom solution. Listening well is a very important skill that affects the whole customer experience. The better a sales representative can listen, the more they can customize a solution to fit the customer’s job, problems, and goals.<\/p>

Strategy for Customer Engagement<\/h2>

Your strategy for customer engagement should be an all-in-one solution that fits with what your customers want. Consider their needs at all times: What do they value? What are some of the prevalent issues they have? Create a customer-centric strategy that adds value to your customers and encourages them to interact with you more. There are some tried-and-true methods to get you started, based on your sales team, customer base, and product or service:<\/p>

#1. Share Your Company’s Story, Mission, and Vision<\/h3>

This strategy for customer engagement involves sharing your business story, Stories are easy to remember and understand. They give people a reason to trust your business. Make your brand more relatable by telling people about your mission, vision, and story. Help your customers understand what your business is all about. Make sure to include your customers in your story and give them a starring role: take the chance to relate, listen to their goals and problems, and ultimately establish a common vision.<\/p>

#2. Practice Active Listening<\/h3>

Customers make it clear what they want, so pay attention. What are people saying about your business, and what are they not saying? How do they judge you compared to your rivals? Let customers easily submit comments, discuss their experiences, record responses, and follow up. Follow-ups at the right time show your audience that you heard what they said and are committed to making the customer experience better. When you get bad feedback, make sure to listen and try to solve the problem, not just calm the customer down.<\/p>

#3. Collaborate to Define and Mutually Agree on a Plan that Works<\/h3>

This strategy for customer engagement should be a team effort that includes feedback from both customers and sellers. A mutual action plan (MAP) assists both parties in identifying the resources, milestones, and other information required to meet the needs of the customer. Customers can trust you to give them exactly what they require, removing the guesswork and making the process of completing agreements faster and easier.<\/p>

#4. Provide Free Benefits to Users<\/h3>

Reward people for their loyalty by providing something for free not ink pens or water bottles, but items your clients genuinely require. Offer them free advice on how to use your product to its fullest potential or a link to a cost-benefit analysis site. Free benefits are another way to get people to buy from you. Give potential customers a taste of what you have to offer without giving everything away. If your customers are new business owners, you could offer them a free webinar on planning and resource management. If they work in the manufacturing industry, you could give them a white paper on the new rules for their industry.<\/p>

#5. Take a Social Approach<\/h3>

Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have become popular places for people to express their dissatisfaction with a company’s gratitude. In any case, these tools provide you with direct access to your customers’ raw thoughts and feelings. Respond to comments, share user content, show support for a cause, and provide useful resources to get to know your customers better.<\/p>

Customer Engagement Platform<\/h2>

A key piece of software known as a “customer engagement platform” controls, analyzes, and facilitates interactions with prospects and customers. It works with customer engagement technologies such as email, direct messaging, chatbots, and others. <\/p>

Using the four factors above, we’ve found some popular platforms. Startups, SMBs, and enterprises in retail, food and beverage, financial services, media, telecommunications, healthcare, and other industries use them. This is not a full list, but it does represent some of the most common and adaptable alternatives.<\/p>

#1. Twilio Engage<\/h3>

Twilio Engage collects data from places like apps, websites, and CRMs. It also has tools for advertising, analytics, email marketing, feature flagging, A\/B testing, and more. It can then combine all of this information into profiles to give you a single view of the customer. This can be used with communications APIs that can be extended to interact with users across touchpoints and devices.<\/p>

Features<\/strong><\/p>