What is it?
Customer engagement is all about making sure the customer feels valued. It’s about creating an authentic relationship between a brand and its customers beyond the sales experience.
Why you need it?
Essentially, customer engagement encourages customer loyalty and ambassadorship. Customers use social media to vent about negative experiences, as well as, sharing positive experiences they have had with brands. Customers are more likely to trust reviews from other customers than advertising efforts.
Proactive vs Reactive customer service
There are two approaches to customer service, proactive and reactive. The basic difference between the two approaches is proactive service is all about taking initiative and dealing with problems before they are brought up. Whereas, reactive customer service is dealing with problems when customers make contact.
Proactive customer service can be as simple as sending a notification to customers when you can’t fulfill a service at the time and another notification when you can. This would keep your customers informed in a timely manner and stop them from calling help centres to complain about the lack of service.
How can you increase your customer engagement?
Treat customers as though they are more than just a sale
Allow your customers to have a say in your brand. Ask them what colours they would want your next product to be, which brands they want you to partner with, or how you can change your service for the better. Relate to them on a human level. Create a loyalty or rewards program for customers.
Show you care
Offer sincere apologies and explain how you can solve their problem. Learn about your customers and what they want or how to make their experiences with your brand better or easier. Show that your brand wants the customer to choose the right product based on their particular needs.
Be convenient
Find a way to make their transaction quicker and easier. Offer a frequently asked questions page, alert customers of current issues, or a live chat option on your website. Create shareable content, then make it easy to share by adding social sharing buttons to your content.