If you’re a small business owner then it is likely that to you, bringing in newer customers is a priority. It is indeed beneficial to gain new customers but it is even more important to make the customers you already have keep coming back to your business for your goods or services. Customer engagement precisely deals with this issue.
Customer engagement is aimed at establishing relationships with your existing customers. It takes into account all the methods by which you’re able to get in touch with your customers. You might be able to keep in touch with them through phone calls, social media, emails, etc.
If you approach these strategically, you should be able to satisfy your existing customers. This will also facilitate in bringing in newer customers as well. It is important to know the kind of audience that you have. You should have a clear idea regarding the methods through which your customers intend to stay in touch with you after they’ve bought your product or services.
What do you mean by customer engagement strategy?
It is a strategy which is used to make your customer satisfaction level higher by engaging more with them in a positive manner. You will be able to accomplish this by using any mode communication that is available. A good customer engagement strategy tends to focus on proactive measures rather than reactive measures. That is to say that It is your company that should reach out to the customers in the first place rather than the customers coming to you.
Why is it important?
Research shows that the primary reason why a customer would want to do business with you is because of the customer experience. This is astonishing because this takes into account how you made the customer feel about your brand rather than the quality and price of the product or service you’re offering.
The way you make a customer feel about you is the reason why they’ll probably recommend your business to others. For small businesses, when it comes to referrals, there can be nothing better than the word of mouth. Thus it is absolutely essential that you make some customer engagement strategies.
How to know which stage your customer interaction is at?
- Rise in customer interactions– The first thing that you would be able to note is that your social media pages would be abuzz with customer interactions. You’ll simply find more and more people reacting and commenting on your posts. Social media sites nowadays allow you to see the level of customer engagement
- Reviews– The next thing that’ll happen is that you’ll start getting more and more positive reviews from your customers. This could be due to any number of reasons. If you have an excellent customer service or a very good product or service, then it is likely that you’ll get positive reviews from your customers. The most common places where you’ll find reviews are Facebook, yelp, Google etc.
- Happy customers– Happy customers are great for business. To know how happy they are you can take the help of surveys. It is advisable that you do not send out surveys too frequently or surveys that are too long or time consuming. At the very most, sending out two surveys a year is more than enough. The questions you ask in your surveys shouldn’t vary a lot. But they’ll give you a great idea about how the customer feels about your company. A customer filling out a survey means you’ve been successful in maintaining customer engagement.
- The role of word of mouth– Like it has been mentioned earlier, satisfied customers are more likely to tell about your business to other people who previously had not heard about your business at all. You should take the time to thank the customers who spread the word for you because for small businesses there can be no bigger reward than this.
It doesn’t take a lot
Customer engagement is something that a huge number of businesses are opting for. You won’t need to think outside the box all over again to become successful, nor do you need to put in an extraordinary amount of effort in order to be successful in this regard. You should only set goals that you’ll be able to achieve and you should keep an eye out for observing how those strategies you’ve put in place are working. If you give it enough time a put in the required amount of effort, your customer engagement is sure to increase.
