How to Effectively Engage with Today’s Customer: 5 Steps

If there’s one constant in customer service, it’s that the customer’s wants and needs are bound to evolve. Just when you think you’ve gotten your strategy sorted out, a new report comes out that shifts the conversation around how best to communicate with today’s customers.

So how do we stay on top of these shifting preferences? Enter: Customer engagement. A customer engagement strategy is an essential part of customer service and allows you to hear directly from customers about the job that you’re doing.

We’ve compiled a five-step plan for how to create your own effective customer engagement.

Why Is Customer Engagement Important?

Customer engagement takes the guesswork out of customer service by hearing directly from your customers. This information is best gleaned from conversations between representatives and the customer — and can be had across a variety of communication channels.

From social media to video, tracking customer conversations is the best way to gauge how your customers feel about your product and services. These conversations may also shed light on potential improvements or features to add to your product or service to make it even more valuable to your customers.

5 Steps to Create a Customer Engagement Strategy

Now that you know why customer engagement is important, you’re probably wondering where to start with or improve your own customer engagement strategy.

Below, we talk through five steps you can take to gather data and engage with your customers.

1. Find the right technology. Look for a customer engagement platform that allows you to have engagements with customers across a wide variety of channels and touchpoints. A few platforms to look into include: Omnichannel customer service, conversational marketing, and conversational commerce.
2. Locate the channels your customers prefer. Different generations prefer to connect with brands in different ways. By identifying your target audience(s), you can have a better idea of your target demographic and use research to map out the channels your customers prefer.
3. Offer personalized experiences. Rather than sticking to a strict script, giving your representatives a little freedom to have more personalized conversations with customers can pave the way for exceptional customer experiences.
4. Invite customer feedback. Not all customers will share their insights with a company. Some need a little enticing. You can do so by offering incentives for giving a review or feedback in the form of discounts on a future purchase, free shipping, or other customer loyalty reward strategies.
5. Collect data from customer interactions. A mix of leading and lagging customer engagement indicators are crucial to know how your customer engagement strategy is benefiting your overall business and customer service goals.

Customer engagement is a key metric to nurture and develop in today’s competitive market. For even more inspiration on how to create a lasting customer engagement strategy, this infographic from Sinch outlines examples of brands that are knocking customer engagement out of the park and shares lessons learned from successful brands.

Please include attribution to Sinch.com with this graphic.