Without your customers, where would you be?
No matter the type of business you’re in, customers are essential to your success. And, because of that, it matters how you engage and communicate with them.
A customer engagement strategy is more than simply providing professional customer service. It’s an all-encompassing plan that nurtures relationships and supports the customer journey from start to finish.
Here’s why customer engagement matters, how to build a strategy around it, and 12 fundamental tips to incorporate.
Why Customer Engagement Matters
Simply, customer engagement is how you interact and communicate with customers.
A more nuanced look at customer engagement is to understand that it’s a strategy to strengthen relationships with customers. We’ve seen this first-hand at Launch, where we have dedicated on-site staff to support the customer experience and build strong relationships with members.
Through strategic planning and the right systems or tools, customer engagement has many positive impacts:
- Increased conversion and sales: Since a customer engagement strategy touches each part of the sales funnel, it can directly impact sales and profits.
- Higher retention or customer loyalty: It always costs more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. When customers are happy with your products or services, they’ll stick around, spend more, and increase overall revenue. And when you treat them well, this effect is compounded.
- Stronger competitive advantage: A high-quality customer engagement strategy can set you apart from your competitors who don’t offer the same experience.
- Effective word-of-mouth promotion: Customers will share their experiences—both good and bad. And with the prevalence of online reviews, this is more common than ever before. Strong customer engagement will lead to positive word-of-mouth promotion for your company.
How to Build a Customer Engagement Strategy
Most professionals and business leaders already have strong communication skills. But a customer engagement strategy goes beyond a simple phone call or online interaction—it’s about creating an overarching plan that touches each point of the customer journey.
A customer engagement strategy takes some planning. Here are a few steps to get you started:
- Look at your stats: Collect data on your social media engagement, conversions, retention rates, and web traffic, among other metrics. This helps you determine a starting point to work from.
- Set goals: Looking at your data, what do you want to improve or achieve? It might be to generally increase sales or to convert more clients from your social media campaign. Whatever goals they are, use the SMART goal framework to make them more impactful.
- Bring a team together: Customer engagement is not the responsibility of one person or department but should be a company-wide priority. So, gather relevant stakeholders to be part of the process. And, if you’re a solopreneur or work with a small team, consider tapping into your broader network. Access to a professional community is one of the biggest advantages of coworking spaces. At Launch, customer experience is the top priority—that’s why we have on-site staff and high-touch service. We’re an extension of your team, here to help where we can.
- Build a strategy: Put pen to paper and build out your strategy. Below we offer 12 fundamental tips to consider. They’re broken up into pre-, mid-, and post-sale—all important parts of the customer journey.
Customer Engagement Strategy Essentials
Your company’s strategy is impacted by your specific business goals, mandate, and customers.
That said, there are effective customer engagement essentials that work for most businesses. And because your strategy should hit all parts of the customer journey, we’ve broken them up into three sections:
- Pre-sale engagement: What can you do to draw people in, capture their attention, and push them further along the sales funnel?
- Mid-sale engagement: How can you support someone who’s decided to buy? What can you do to ensure that the customer converts?
- Post-sale engagement: What builds customer loyalty and how can you keep them coming back?
Pre-sale engagement
- Use storytelling for effective marketing: Draw customers in by telling them what you’re all about. Stories connect people and make them interested in learning more. Consider marketing campaigns that share about who you are, where your inspiration comes from, and your values and goals as a company.
- Have an easy-to-navigate website: This one’s simple—if people can’t find what they’re looking for on your website, they won’t stay long. Make sure your website is clear and easy to navigate. This also extends to your social media, emails, and other communication platforms.
- Get to know them: Make sure you’re spending time listening to clients and customers, understanding what they’re looking for. Focus groups and market research are effective ways to do this. Or, depending on your business, you might want to personally walk a customer or client through your solutions—this is when having a professional workspace is essential. Take advantage of fully-appointed meeting rooms where you can impress your client and get to know their needs.
- Consider omnichannel communications: Today, customers can—and will—reach out on multiple platforms (i.e., social media, email, phone call, walk-in). The customer service and engagement need to be consistent across channels. Omnichannel communication is the concept of one integrated system across all platforms. To dig deeper into this concept, we recommend this resource all about omnichannel experiences.
- Give quick and accurate responses: Timely and helpful responses are essential in the pre-sale phase. With so many consumer options, you can assume customers are looking at your competitors, too. Get a leg up by responding to inquiries quickly and accurately so the customer has what they need to make a decision. If you’re struggling to keep up with the volume of inquiries, consider hiring a high-quality virtual assistant to help you.
Mid-sale engagement
- Provide real-time engagement: Building on the last point, real-time engagement through a live chat function is effective for troubleshooting when someone is making a purchase.
- Use targeted auto-responses and pop-ups: As customers browse your website, you want to do what you can to make them complete a purchase. Using an exit intent pop-up or cart abandonment email are two ways to do this. For the first, it’s a simple pop-up that says something like “Before you go… want 20% off your purchase?”. The second is an email that’s sent reminding them of the items in their cart. Well-crafted messages along with a valuable offer can be effective to capture those unsure customers.
- Offer personalized service: Personalization can help a company stand apart from its competitors because it makes the customer feel valued and special. Options for personalization include using the customer’s name in any communications, including handwritten notes for packages or smart content in email marketing, creating a unique unboxing experience, or suggesting products and services based on past purchases.
Post-sale engagement
- Ask for feedback: Prompting customers to leave a review, rating, or feedback can provide you with valuable information on how to improve. It also makes customers feel heard and valued. But it’s not enough to just ask. You need to find ways to implement relevant feedback to show that you’re listening.
- Communicate regularly: Once someone has made a purchase, follow up with them on a regular basis. Be consistent and helpful but not overbearing. Focus on high-quality content, information, or promotions that add value. Regular communication supports customer retention by keeping you top-of-mind.
- Implement customer loyalty programs: Everyone loves a good discount. Customer loyalty programs are a great way to have repeat buyers who return time and time again.
- Interact on social media: Be active across your social media platforms by responding to comments or mentions. You can also repost user-generated content (i.e., what customers post themselves and tag you in) for organic growth and visibility.
These fundamentals will help you build a strong and clear customer engagement strategy. Focus on what works specifically in your business and make sure to plan for all phases of the customer lifecycle. If you do, you’ll see a boost in sales and profits, more loyal customers, and gain a meaningful competitive advantage.
Looking for a well-appointed flexible workspace that will impress your customers and clients and reflect well on your business? Then book a tour of your local Launch Workplace today.
