5 Ways to Approach and Engage with Customers
Customer engagement is an essential subject in the business world. It covers the interactions between customers and brands; the quality and quantity of these interactions also hold great significance. To anyone who seeks to increase customer relationships and product sales simultaneously, how to drive customer engagement is a question that needs answers.
To fully answer what it takes to drive customer engagement, one needs to understand what customer engagement means. Whilst there are several definitions out there that befit this subject, in this article we will be exploring the best and most fitting! From the various interpretations in the next section, one can develop an understanding of customer engagement as well as how it can be used to drive customer engagement.
So, let’s dive in.
What is Customer Engagement?
While addressing the ways you can calculate customer engagement, Eric Peterson defined the subject as an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction against an identified set of goals. This definition points out the fact that customer engagement has several levels. Customers who have been engaged with your brand will have more profound levels of engagement when compared to those who are still new.What the above definition brings to attention is that the higher the frequency and value of engagement, the greater the level of investment that will come from your customer in the long term.Another superb definition that suits this article is the one given by Paul Greenberg at his interview with Hubspot. He referred to customer engagement as the ongoing interactions between company and customer, offered by the company, and chosen by the customer. This definition expresses the fact that the customer decided to interact with the brand.Paul’s definition makes us understand that allowing our customers to choose how they want to interact with us helps in discovering the type of engagements that they find to be valuable.
1. Swift Responses to Customers
This course of action is one of the several ways you can use to increase and encourage recurring customer engagement. You can make use of live chat applications or software to track and quickly give correct responses to every question from your customers. The critical point to keep in mind when working towards delivering quick answers to customers is that it is not limited to social media. It extends to customer service.
Your customer service should respond swiftly and correctly whenever customers reach out to the company. This efficiency helps drive customer engagement in ways that are indirect and subtle. The potential that lies in meaningful and sound customer engagement that originates from your websites is worth the effort.
2. Personalize Your Brand Communications
What does it mean to personalize your brand communications? It means finding ways to remind your customers of your brand’s ‘existence regularly’. A right way of doing that is sending emails or text-based mentions to customers regularly. You can also send birthday greetings, anniversaries, or general celebrations like Fathers’ Day or Mothers’ Day.
Apart from regularly bringing your brand to the minds of your customers, this course of action helps them develop emotional attachments to your brand. To effectively drive customer engagement, this is a good practice to adopt. It is important to note that the strength of this course of action is not found in the messages; it is located in the consistency of the messaging.
3. Staying Ahead with the Use of Relevant information
The purpose of this method is to engage your customers by giving information that addresses their problems and needs. However, this information should always lead back to your brand and services. Offering solutions to those who are looking to patronize you is an excellent way to start and drive customer engagement.
An excellent way to pull customer attention is creating content that proffers solutions to customer challenges while they are buying from you. These solutions can be direct or indirect, but your brand should make them. They can be a part of your site, or you can make them stand alone but should lead back to your brand or organization.
Remember that sales arise from dealing with customer needs, and when done right, the customer will tell others about it.
4. Encourage Your Customers to Talk to You
The aim of listening to your customers is to find out precisely what they need. Remember that communication is crucial to driving customer engagement. However, this communication cannot be complete without listening to your customers to understand what they want and to give the right response. That’s why it’s important you encourage your customers to talk to you, as this will help your organization make decisions that will be welcomed by them.
Another reason for this action is that the longer your client talks, the more you understand their reasons for contacting you and talking. Sometimes the customer will not express what he or she wants at first; it is your place to be patient and not assume for him or her. As the discussion goes on, you will be able to pinpoint the cause and take the right course of action.
5. Draw Your Customers’ interest, Avoid the Hard Sell
To achieve this, social media is an ideal tool to use. Making use of social media in customer engagement is not limited to posting products; it extends to using it to strike a conversation with customers. To do this, you will need to post things that pull their interest.
Sharing engaging content that leads to conversations with clients is an excellent way to drive customer engagement online. Avoid putting your products and services in their faces all the time, engage in interactions with them, and an emotional attachment will be formed from the conversation.
The Verdict
Driving customer engagement is an achievable way to grow your business and achieve long-term success if you apply the right efforts. Implementing ways to interact with your customers is an excellent way to kick this off. Remember that in the long run, the rewards are more than worth the effort. So, don’t leave this part of your business to luck or chance; take the step!
