Customer Engagement is a ethics driven strategy where a business puts the customer as the focal point and provides them with every possible support pre-sales and after-sales. The business establishes a solid professional relationship with the customer by doing so.
Customer Engagement is a critical aspect of brand building. An engaged customer is a happy customer, and a happy customer buys more, promotes more and is loyal. Customer engagement acts as an emotional cord between a customer and a brand. The ultimate objective of customer engagement is to provide customers value beyond products and services.
Customer loyalty is key to the sustenance and growth of a business. But no one can buy customer loyalty; it has to be built by providing quality service, efficient engagement and dedicated after-sales support.
The integral aspect of customer engagement is to open multiple communication channels with the customers and keep these channels open 24-7. This way, customers can reach out to the business for queries, support and more.
On the contrary to popular assumptions that creating a customer engagement strategy is expensive, modern communication channels have made it inexpensive to set up customer engagement channels. Strategic adoption of customer engagement channels will help small businesses break newer grounds.
For the success of any strategy, the goal has to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). A customer engagement channel for having one will not yield optimal results. For a small business, Engagement goals should be centred around building a sustainable relationship with the customer.
With customer engagement, customer perspective is the key. Not every business will thrive on Facebook. Small businesses need to find the proper channels to optimise customer engagement. Across all strategies, the common channel will be website engagement.
The customer engagement process is dynamic. A customer engagement channel that worked a year ago might not work today. As new tech products hit the market, customer engagement should move along, catching up with the trend. This ensures that the customers find relevant engagement channels from the business that keep them engaged. The customer engagement team must be vibrant, robust and iterating.
All teams must collaborate and achieve the goals for customer engagement success. It is not about one department; all the departments must work in unison to achieve the common goals. While individual departments might take the lead during a particular phase of customer engagement, all departments need to them up to ensure the customers derive value through engagement.
Small businesses need to start thinking on the lines of bettering customer engagement. By doing so, small businesses can gain customers' trust and in the process, build a sustainable business and revenue model.