Customer experience
We have all heard the saying a thousand times; ‘The customer is King.’ But what does that mean for businesses and how can you use customer engagement to develop a robust customer loyalty program?
Technical developments such as smart media, social technology and integrated buying make for an extremely competitive landscape. Customer service is no longer an isolated function in business, which is why customer engagement has become so influential within the past five years and why businesses really need to look at investing in their customer journey more so than ever before.
Ensuring you provide real-time experiences that meet customers where they are at is imperative.
Whether it’s an in-app purchase tool, geo-mapping technology that shows your product is available at customers’ fingertips, or easy online purchasing navigation, you must ensure you are meeting customer needs even in ways they don’t yet realise they have a need for.
Here we share three key ways you can develop a customer centric engagement strategy for success;
Start a conversation
The development of technologies such as social media and interactive video marketing mean that you have audiences at your fingertips – all you need to do is engage with them.
The beauty of social media means that customers have immediate access to brands for customer service queries, purchasing negotiations - and complaints – the real-time nature of modern marketing means that you must have an omni-channel approach to engaging customers.
Whether you are a B2B or B2C centric company; you should be striving to deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience across all channels and touch points to customers, whether it is an in-person interaction at a store, a mobile device interaction, a phone call, a tweet, or an email.
Audiences are in the driving seat and more informed than ever. Building informative engagement with your market means that you will continue to be part of their customer journey and indirectly influence their buying habits.
73% of marketers view customer centricity as critical to the success of their business and role at the company.
Provide Real-Time Benefits
Audiences want to experience personal fun messaging when dealing with brands. They want content that connects and not simply addresses ‘their need’ but stimulates ‘wants’ in a customer-centric approach.
For example, public transport is not often seen as a delightful customer experience, but Virgin Trains recently launched a campaign which was based on creating a new and innovative way for train travellers to connect and engage with the brand, before, during and after their journeys, making train travel an overall more pleasing and exciting experience;
They first launched their new website which was in direct response to extensive customer feedback. Not only does the website incorporate customers’ requests, but it now also integrates a new interactive video-campaign, including a witty series of animated videos in order to shed light and inform travellers on an array of queries and answers for their journeys – from how to travel with bicycles through to the types of tickets offered.
Anticipate and Act
Modern technology improvements mean that brands can now integrate marketing tactics such as video, and extend this into a seamless integration with sales measurement.
In essence, what this means for customer engagement is that their ‘journey’ becomes slicker and more engaged within the brands they are purchasing from – and, as a result brands can convert to a sale at the maximum point of engagement, increasing ROI.
But what measures can brands make without this technology?
That’s simple – while it may be easy to view customer engagement as another marketing campaign, it is important for businesses to recognise the growing power of the customer, and to rethink their strategies to fully meet and even exceed customer expectations.
The crucial element of customer engagement is content. The content must be driven towards your audience, be it their lack of knowledge, queries, sweet spot (need) or indeed complaints and barriers they face in your industry/ location/ brand – how can you make their journey with your market fun, interesting and relevant for them?
First, understand your audience structure, who are they, where do they live, what makes them engage, and most importantly, what makes them buy – and then, exploit it!
70% of buyers stated that ‘consistent and relevant communications’ from both sales and marketing departments were paramount in their final purchasing decision.
By Rob Remington Drake, Director and Head of Content Strategy at BraveSpark Media.
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