Customer engagement is the key to converting visitors to paying customers. You may have the best products and offerings in your industry but if your target market is not engaged, no amount of convincing will convert them. Customer engagement is not just about reducing your churn and getting more referrals. You need to interact with both current and prospective customers actively.
Customer engagement can help your business identify customer pain points, expectations, and communication challenges. Data from Microsoft reveals that 79% of customers say that being able to engage with reps or agents is very important for them. Successful customer engagement can reduce customer churn by 63%. With that in mind, let us list down the ways you can boost customer engagement.
Tips On Boosting Customer Engagement
- Provide A Personalized Experience
- Be An Active Listener
- Implement Loyalty Programs
- Get Customer Feedback
- Keep A Customer-Centric Mindset
- Enhance Customer Relationship
- Be Where Your Customers Are
- Deliver Omnichannel Experience
- Improve Customer Experience
- Encourage Customer Review
Tips On Boosting Customer Engagement
Ensuring that your customers are fully engaged can go a long way in customer retention and revenue generation. Statistics show engaged customers can generate 51% more revenue and sales than disengaged ones. In addition, fully engaged customers spend 23% more during their lifetime than average customers. Furthermore, they spend 60% more per transaction. Here are some tips on how you can boost customer engagement.
1. Provide A Personalized Experience
Customers want to feel loved and valued by businesses. Today’s breed of shoppers crave personalized experiences. Data from Salesforce shows that customers want businesses to understand their specific needs and expectations. Unfortunately, 66% of customers feel that they are often treated like numbers. Providing a personalized experience should be your top priority if you want to retain the business of your customers.
Offering a personal experience to your customers can help nurture feelings of loyalty. It can also help them feel connected to your brand. It can increase the average customer lifetime value and keep customer acquisition costs low. Utilize customer data to determine how to personalize messages and content that you will deliver to your customers.
Use key insights to focus on customer preferences in creating personalized experiences. However, make sure not to collect too much data or customers might become suspicious of the data you are collecting. Always keep in mind the policies for data collection to avoid being in hot water with the regulators.
2. Be An Active Listener
Active listening can be an effective way of calming down a frustrated and irate customer. During these times, customers will look up to you to guide and help them find a solution to their problem. Active listening is an important skill that customer service teams should possess. With this skill, you can reduce misunderstandings by 40%.
Active listening means paying attention to what the customer wants to say or is saying. It means being responsive to their concerns and feedback. Being an active listener means letting the customer speak out and finish what they are saying. Through active listening, you will be able to know how negative or positive your brand is being viewed.
Give your customers a platform for them to voice out their opinions and lodge their concerns. Of course, all that active listening will go for naught if you do not respond and take action. Whether it’s good or bad feedback, listening to your customers can go a long way in retaining their business or gaining new ones as well.
3. Implement Loyalty Programs
One effective way to keep customers engaged is to give them a reason to do so. Reward your customers for repeat business through loyalty programs. According to KPMG, 75% of customers will favor a brand if there is a loyalty program. Hubspot reveals that 60% of customers will purchase more frequently from their preferred companies.
Loyalty rewards do not have to be tangible products. You can offer incentives like discounts, free shipping, or cashback. Loyalty programs can also help attract new customers to your business. These programs help signal how much you value their business. Some loyalty programs also help encourage customers to refer friends and family members to your business.
More importantly, loyalty programs can help strengthen relationships with current customers and encourage them to keep doing business with you. It is important to make your rewards and incentives achievable and valuable to make your customers fully engaged.
4. Get Customer Feedback
As mentioned earlier, responding to feedback is an effective way of showing customers that you appreciate and value their business. Let’s be honest, your products may not always meet the expectations of your customers. This could be their main source of frustration or disappointment. When they do not have a way to air their grievances or send their feedback, chances are they will leave and take their business elsewhere.
Never underestimate the power of customer feedback. According to the SurveyMonkey Buyer Trust Report, 82% of people trust the voice of customers more than the messages of the brand. In addition, 98% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase decision. For this reason, you should encourage your customers to give their feedback, whether positive or negative.
Provide customers with a channel for making feedback. It can be on your website, blog, or social media channels. However, it is not enough that you allow them to give feedback. You should also respond and take action on those feedbacks. Listening to customer feedback can be beneficial to your business.
5. Keep A Customer-Centric Mindset
Product selling is not all about features and specifications but is more about selling its benefits. While your primary goal is to generate a profit, you should also be looking out for the welfare of the shopper. Customer engagement is all about giving the customer what they want and not what you want. They will buy your product because of what it can do for them, not for its features or specifications.
Being customer-centric sends a signal to the buyer that you value them. Providing them with what they want results in customer satisfaction. You should focus on the customer experience first before the sales. Conversion follows when the customer is satisfied with the experience they received from your business. Customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. In addition, they may also refer your business to friends and family who might need the same product.
You may have the best product or service in the market but if the customer is not engaged it will not mean anything. Put the customer front and center and everything will follow. You can create customer satisfaction surveys to help you better understand what customers think about your product and the brand as a whole. These tools will help you identify what aspects of your brand you still need to improve on to better offer excellent customer experiences.
6. Enhance Customer Relationship
Customer engagement is about building relationships. You want to ensure that the customer will keep doing business with you for as long as possible. Strengthening customer relationships can be beneficial in increasing your conversion rate. You need to earn the trust of your customers to retain their business. Customers are 23% more likely to spend money with brands they trust. The trust you will gain from your customers will make a huge difference in their purchase decisions.
In order to boost customer relationships, you need to connect with them. It entails putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. This means understanding where they are coming from. You need to hear them out even if it means going out of your comfort zone. You need to understand their pain points because it is the only way you can provide them with the best customer experience and solution to their problems.
However, it is worth noting that building relationships takes time. Get to know your customers first and determine the most effective method of engaging them. Getting to know them on a deeper level will help you personalize your offerings based on their specific needs. It is important to go above and beyond but don’t expect to win their trust right away.
7. Be Where Your Customers Are
Potential customers could be looking for your products from a different channel. If they cannot find you on that channel, then that customer is lost. Just because you are on Facebook does not mean they will also be there. How can you build relationships if your target audience cannot locate you in the first place?
Find out where your customers are and connect with them there. Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, customers expect you to engage them on their platform of choice. They may not have a Facebook or LinkedIn account so look for them on other channels. At the same time, you cannot be on every channel there is. It can be hard to connect with people on social media but it is not that difficult as long as you know where to find them.
Better yet, let them find you. Use your website or blog page to let customers know how they can connect with you. Create engaging content and you are likely to be found in search engines. The more engaged people are through your content, the more likely you will be found. Finally, direct customers to a dedicated landing page.
8. Deliver Omnichannel Experience
The digital age has expanded the ways customers can reach businesses. For this reason, you need to engage customers across all digital channels. Providing an omnichannel experience is the way to go nowadays to retain existing customers or acquire new ones. Omnichannel customer engagement can result in an 89% customer retention rate on average. Furthermore, businesses practicing omnichannel engagement see a 9.5% yearly increase in annual revenue.
Keep in mind that not all your customers will be on just one platform. Thus, you need to set up several channels to help create more opportunities for dialogue between yourself and your customers. In addition, some of your customers may not be on social media. An omnichannel experience will not only ensure that you can reach customers on their platform but also make customer response more quick and efficient.
Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. You need to optimize your strategies for each platform. While doing so, you need to maintain your brand voice. Consistency is the key regardless of the platform you are using. Keep on testing your strategies to determine which one works and which one does not.
9. Improve Customer Experience
Today’s customers will base their purchase decisions on the kind of customer experience they receive from businesses. Customer experience will become the new battlefield so you need to take your customer experience a notch higher. 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. The more expensive the item, the more they are willing to pay.
Customers want to feel valued and will reward businesses who do so in the form of sales. Surely, you would not want to do business with a company that treats you poorly. A positive customer experience will lead to happy and satisfied buyers. On the other hand, customer frustration could lead to churn. 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience.
Customers expect more than just a generic message. They want solutions that cater to their needs and interests. Understanding their preferences, behavior, and needs can help you provide a positive customer experience. It shows customers that you understand their needs and care about them which could help increase loyalty and advocacy.
10. Encourage Customer Review
Just like customer feedback, reviews should never be taken for granted. A 2021 report by PowerReviews revealed that more than 99.9% of customers read reviews when shopping online and 96% of these customers look for negative reviews. In its survey, BrightLocal says that 49% of customers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family. Customers look for negative reviews because it guides them in making informed purchase decisions.
Allowing customers to make product reviews can help increase conversion rates. The same PowerReviews study revealed that online reviews can lead to a 120% increase in conversion rate. A whopping 86% of customers will not buy your product unless it is accompanied by a review.
Provide your shoppers with a platform where they can rate and review your product. If you do not have reviews on your website yet, it is high time to incorporate one to attract new customers. If you have a physical store, you can encourage customers to review their experience right off the bat.
Having the best product or website is not an assurance of sales. However, ensuring that the customer is fully engaged is important. Fully engaged customers will not only help generate revenues for you but also contribute to customer acquisition.
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