We already know the vying importance of customer service or after-sales service in this consumer-first world. What we often give a miss is persistent customer engagement to inspire and connect with the customers at a personal level. 

The way you connect with your target audience should feel less transactional and more informational to retain their interest in your product. Here’s a lowdown of facts that substantiate the need for customer engagement in your business and why there’s a need to boost it to stay relevant in the long haul. 

• About 84% businesses believe enhancing customer engagement has boosted their revenues by up to 8% more than their competitors. 

• Customers are willing to pay a premium price for products when they receive rich customer experiences. 

• Over 65% of customers remain long-term users of a brand that ensures great experiences throughout the customer journey. 

Why is Customer engagement so important? 

Customer engagement not only means catering to your customers complaints and queries but also how to keep them curious and engaged throughout their purchasing lifecycle. That can include collecting valuable customer information and trying to cater to their problem statements accordingly. 

Now, this can be done in a variety of ways and I have distilled down industry-best practices to give it a good whirl. 

1. Respect customer’s privacy 

No, you just can’t call your customers and expect to exchange pleasantries. It gets worse if your business call appears suspicious to them. There’s an option to cut through the clutter and enrich your customer calling experience if you enable the Verified Caller ID for your business number. 

Why? Every call is a business opportunity. The call recipient will not only know who is calling but why someone is calling. This will help you improve your calling efficiency as customers will pick up your calls without any hesitation.

Truecaller for business is ideal for such scenarios that not only adds a ‘Verified Badge’ to your calls business but also underscores insightful data to help you plan your next business calling campaigns better.  

2. Stay abreast of changing needs

You might have already noticed the changing needs and preferences of people with time on social media. This stands for your product as well. Interact more with your customers in the form of surveys or 1:1 calls and try to understand their expectations and purchasing patterns. 

About 45% of marketers admit that getting new customers is one of their biggest challenges while 55% grapple with their remarketing and upselling techniques. Not paying heed to the changing needs of your customers is one of the reasons why some marketers are still running on a hamster wheel. 

3. Stitch compelling stories 

Did you notice people reacting to engaging stories of personal accounts more than brand accounts on LinkedIn? People love stories. It can be funny, motivational, insightful, or knowledge-worthy. 

Ask your happy and loyal customers to give a shoutout in the form of interesting stories that are more likely to trigger an emotional response on their social channels. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram are the best channels to connect deeply with your audience at large. You can either share those stories directly on your brand accounts or repurpose the stories in the form of carousel posts or case studies and do not forget to tag them.  

4. Live chat is good, Toll-free is great 

While a section of the audience prefers live chat to engage with their favorite brands, many still prefer talking to a ‘customer care executive’ to get their issues resolved. Here’s why - Live chat can be great at a preliminary stage where your response is mostly AI-enabled and often doesn’t require a human agent’s intervention.

But what about critical issues? This is when you allow your customers to call a toll-free number and connect them with respective agents to fill in all the gaps and nuances. A cloud-based toll-free number not only saves the exorbitant expenses of a traditional call centre setup but also lets you engage with your customer complaints and queries anytime, anywhere in a remote system.  

Bonus 

Now customer engagement strategies depend on the types and needs of businesses. It varies from business to business.

The customer engagement strategy of an e-commerce business will be different from a software product.

However, some techniques can be commonly applied in any business. Well, mostly! Those are: 

• Upselling to existing customers 

• Build a community-based group on WhatsApp or other digital channels 

• Reward your loyal customers 

• Always ask for feedback

• Sending newsletters that benefit them in some way or the other

• Remarketing