The rise of technology, use of mobile devices and the significant growth of social media have empowered customers in a new way. With the touch of a few buttons, customers can have all the information they want at their fingertips.
With this, they also have the ability to leave scathing reviews or comments that can negatively impact any business. This goes particularly true with smaller businesses who tend to have fewer reviews.
With these ever-changing and fast-moving platforms, businesses and their marketers have to think how they’re going to get the attention of their customers. Most importantly, they need to know how they’re going to keep them interested, make a purchase or sign up.
So, what can you do to increase the number of customers engaging with you and your company? Here are some of the most effective customer engagement tips you can try.
Utilize Social Media As A Customer Engagement Tool
Too many businesses use their social media accounts to simply create an online presence. In reality, however, there is so much more potential in Twitter, Facebook and Instagram than reposting content, making comments and announcing and promoting a product or service.
See Also: Finding Out The Best Time For Posting On Social Media Sites
It’s important to connect, share, research influencers and experts and, most importantly, create a conversation with all your followers. You need to create exciting and engaging contents that you can post on all your channels.
These posts should be something that people can react to, provide comment on or get involved with. Ask for feedback on your current products or services to see if there is anything that your customers are demanding.
Create a Twitter poll, for example, so customers can vote on what they’d like to see you offer next. You could also use a poll as a way for your customers to be a part of creating a new product, like voting on names or colors.
Improve Customer Support
As previously mentioned, use of social media has grown significantly and you need to keep this in mind when you’re offering support to your customers.
Is your company offering help through your social media channels? If the answer is no, why?
You should integrate all the channels you use to provide support. Phone, SMS, email and all social media channels can be streamlined into one multichannel solution.This way, if a customer contacts you through multiple platforms, you’ll be able to view all interactions in one place.
This multichannel solution allows for anyone to contact or respond to a customer on the customer’s desired channel with all the previous details on hand. This gives you the opportunity to offer a completely informative and personalized service.
Great customer service is essential these days. One bad experience and everyone will know about it.
It’s human nature to want to express our frustrations about a negative interaction we’ve had. There are so many platforms on which we can let so many people know about it instantly.
Poor customer service can potentially cripple a business, particularly smaller businesses that don’t have many reviews and heavily rely on good reviews to maintain their reputation.
By providing good customer service, you’ll gain a lot of trust from your customers. They’ll think you care and really take pride in looking after them.
Get Personal
Exert effort in knowing your customers, but make sure not to overdo it. Some customers don’t like it when they feel like they’re being watched and followed around the internet.
Something as simple as sending out a discount on their birthday can create a little bit of excitement when they receive it. Offer deals and discounts on what your customers are specifically interested in. There is no point in handing out discounts for products they don’t want or are not interested in.
A personalized marketing approach will make them feel like you’re actually taking notice of them as an individual and not just as another customer.
Data Analysation
It is so important to keep on top of and track the trends your customers are following and creating. Implementing a business intelligence tool will ultimately enable you to unearth information that is useful in improving your customers’ experience.
Something as simple as Google Analytics will allow you to study the behavior of your customers. You’ll be able to understand how much time they spend on your website and on what pages.
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Author: Sue Ellison
Sue Ellison is a freelance marketing manager and is currently working with C3, a Cambridge-based company specializing in computer telephony platforms and associated multichannel applications.
