Digital transformation has helped the tech business industry discover an all-new dimension of business competition and customer engagement. In a world where more than 78% of customers lose interest in a brand due to poor customer experience (Source: SurveyMonkey), customer engagement helps gauge how a customer feels about a brand.
Customer engagement software has been gaining traction all through 2018. It has the elements of customer support software, contact management software as well as numerous integral modules, making it buzzworthy, even in 2019.
Did you know?
Customer engagement and Customer Experience (CX) have a fine line of difference in their scope and focus. Customer engagement is all about initiating, driving, and catalyzing communication between the brand and customer through all possible channels and at all points of time in a buying cycle.
Whereas, CX is a collective term used for the experience gained by any user onboard for using the digital business product. It majorly includes the UX, visuals, content flow, content layout, interactive nature of the mobile/web app, and the consistency of the UI.
The greatest mistake you have been doing with customer engagement
Generally, companies and marketers take a direct, straightforward, upfront approach to work out their customer engagement strategies. Along the process, they usually fail to ensure the perfect configuration of a humane approach and sustainable, perpetually growing customer engagement tech support. The mature minds of businesses are mistaken when they treat their customer engagement expedition bifurcated into two parts, the upfront customer engagement activity, and the related tech support.
As long as a business organization keeps the two in different sacs, they will not be able to procure the desired results. They might have some suddenly achieved short-lived results, but it is bound to crash in the long run if a consistent futuristic approach is missing from the plan.
Thus, it becomes imperative to understand that technology is merely offering a means to enrich customer engagement. Using 360° CRM software in addition to well-directed, humane customer activities and interactions is the only way out.
Without further ado, here are ten of the most effective, actionable customer engagement strategies you should try and integrate into your business plan if you want long-term customer engagement.
Tech-Driven Customer Engagement Strategies:
- Comprehensively adopt and adapt 360° CRM software
The foundation of every customer engagement strategy lies in the CRM software. It is implanted as the hidden hero of every customer engagement story. It is crucial for businesses to carefully research the available options and look for the most appropriate CRM software which coincides with their dire need of engagement and mid-term business goals. It is essential to understand that it is okay to not go with any of the popular terms or products over the Internet.
But, going for something that has a good track record and broadens your scope of improvement and scalability. The importance of a perfectly suitable CRM software is apparent from the fact that 86% of the senior level marketers believe that CRM is essential to create an extraordinary customer journey.
Take dedicated support for engagement analytics
Quality-driven CRM software comes with an integrated dashboard of engagement analytics. But, it is advisable to look for highly customizable analytics-based engagement tools as well. They help you document the engagement pattern and statistics across all channels of the digital products namely mobile, tablets, and PCs.
This is generally underestimated, but it can prove to be useful in predicting the required content subjects and customer insights. Apart from analytics-based assistance, it is advisable to use contact management software as it can have a substantial impact on optimizing customer engagement strategies towards higher productivity and lesser loopholes.
Never ignore your contact center infrastructure
Never mind digital transformation and new trending technologies that crop up each day, communication still remains at the core of effective engagement. Simple calling facilities and inbound marketing strategies are generally outshined by internet-based one-to-one query resolution and complete customer service through emails.
It is a slow process. Customers are generally running short on time and calling can help them get clarifications faster. It is a great way to catalyze active customer engagement and also helps a brand. However greatly we may be impacted by technology, the quantum of the impact of a 1-to-1 fruitful communication remains unparalleled.
Humane, Palpable Customer Engagement Strategies:
‘Content is the king.’ Never doubt it
It is like a chain reaction. When the brand is looking to get its customer engagement strategies on point, it should start by creating highly useful, straight, and crisp content. Make sure the content lies along the lines of a subject which the customers are most probable to look for. This can be analyzed through feedbacks and past instances of customer engagement with the brand.
According to Content Marketing Institute, 72% of B2B marketers found success with the right content marketing strategy.
Be as customer-centric as possible
Content marketing is much more than merely brewing up quality text content. It involves a lot of video, mobile, and web content which needs to be pushed through an Omnichannel infrastructure connecting the brand and customers at two ends.
Every brand should indulge in webinars, quality video content, and highly relatable options for experiential marketing which help the customers relate to a specific experience or a fact about their surroundings or life. Customer who can connect to your brand is more likely to help you excel in customer engagement.
Focus on the highest possible degree of personalization
When we talk about customization, the next thing on mind should be the word everything. Yes, it is a time when 86% of the buyers are willing to pay more for an excellent customer experience. And if they get a genuinely good customer experience, there are most likely to indulge in a perpetually growing customer engagement with your brand.
This requires rigorous analysis and careful strategy building for letting your brand speak through personalized customer experience. It also includes basic communication and every chance of attraction that the brand may create through content, in-person, or digital responses.
Exploit the power of Storytelling
In today’s world, most business propositions are backed by a dominant driving force of great problem-solving ability. It involves improving the lives of its customers. This is how the narrative usually goes: the business has a problem to be solved, it uses certain tools and methods to solve said problem, and in the process, it creates a considerable impact on the customers by solving this problem.
Every brand should focus on creating engaging and intriguing stories about their brands that encompass a similar narrative.
It will help a brand persist in the users’ minds for a longer period of time, thus catalyzing customer engagement. Storytelling is one of the most effective means of reaching millennials captivated by digital devices. The digital population has recently crossed an enormous number of 4.4 billion. The large fraction of the population indulging in Internet usage leaves you with a massive opportunity for outreach and brand-building through storytelling marketing.
Ensure an Omnichannel experience
By being omnichannel, for a brand, we mean simply being able to welcome your customers everywhere they go. It can be through mobiles, emails, engaging digital content on YouTube, or informative blogs while scrolling social media. You should ensure that your brand accompanies the customer wherever he wanders digitally and organically seeps into his everyday life experiences.
Customer engagement is extremely crucial in order to build an emotional connection and an overall rapport between the customer and brand. It reflects direct results as customers who get a chance to demonstrate brand loyalty and trust add 23% more revenue than average.
Pave possibilities of personal communication through in-app CX
You can always communicate one to one with every customer, know his preferences, likes, dislike,s and views over your brand through tips, tricks, surveys. Alongside, the customer may shell out useful information which the brand might need to elevate the overall CX. It is a smart way of engaging your customers in critical conversations which motivates them to express themselves and make the brand more persistent on the mind.
The final word
It is quite clear that the world is swiftly cruising towards a marketing era where customer experience and engagement will rule sales growth and business sustainability. Keeping our foundations on concrete predictions, one can easily guess the importance of a clear-cut, sophisticatedly documented customer engagement strategy as it is expected that by 2020, 89% of the customers will switch brands because of poor customer experience. But if you follow the tried and tested customer engagement strategies, your business/brand will not have to suffer the same fate.
Himanshu Singh is a Marketing Specialist at SoftwareSuggest, He is well versed in software platforms like eCommerce, project management, document management. He is also interested in domains like Machine Learning and Semiconductors. In his spare time, he enjoys Guitar, Badminton, and Photography.
