I recently ran across a customer engagement article on the UK website, FinanceWeek.co.uk. It offers a beautifully succinct definition of customer engagement and explains why it’s so important. In the article, “Customer Retention or Attrition – The Choice is Yours,” Neil Craig defines customer engagement as…
“Customer engagement goes far beyond customer satisfaction to embrace loyalty – and more. In fact, it incorporates the full relationship life cycle and includes emotional aspects as well as analytical ones.”
These are some key messages that I want to point out.
· “…goes far beyond customer satisfaction…” – To really engage a customer, a company needs to go above and beyond and exceed every expectation a customer might have regarding the product or service.
· “…it incorporates the full relationship life cycle…” – One of the main aspects of effective customer engagement is that it’s not a one-time shot. It is a progressive, two-way, individualized conversation strategy. Engage your customers at multiple contact points throughout the course of the relationship to build loyalty.
· “…includes emotional aspects as well as analytical ones…” – Consumers make purchase decisions for many different reasons. To fully engage a customer, a company needs to understand and appeal to the rational (analytical) reasoning as well as the irrational (emotional) reasoning.
Later in the article, Mr. Craig points out that “Customer engagement does not happen by accident. It requires an informed, meaningful and systematic understanding of your customers.” In order to fully and successfully engage your customer, you need to have a relationship life cycle strategy knowing when, how, and why to contact the customer and how to utilize relationship data to appeal to both the emotional aspects and analytical reasoning for each individual; constantly learning and evolving with each contact.
I recommend Mr. Craig’s article. Customer engagement is a conscious effort with a systematic strategy that incorporates the different behaviors of each customer to provide an avenue for a two-way conversation that will grow into a personal relationship with each individual customer.
Customer engagement is paramount for any busines that your’re in. If you do right by your customer and don’t treat them as a commodity they can quickly become an evangelist for your product or service. This makes selling exponentially easier as you have an army of salesmen out in the field that are singing the praises of your product.