If you want your clients to keep coming back to your business time after time, you need to commit to keeping them engaged. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.
Engaging your customers means building a relationship with them over time, through amazing experiences, and consistency. However, there are countless issues that can easily lead to disengagements, such as long waiting times when your clients call your in-house contact center, poor service or inconsistent brand identity.
We are going to explore some of the most important things you can do in the age of no-compromise customer service, to create more engaged clients.
Defining Customer Engagement
To create more engaged customers, you need to start by understanding what engagement actually means. Customer engagement underscores the whole purpose of your brand’s marketing strategy.
It determines why your customers choose you over the competition and keeps them coming back for more of the same high-quality service.
To acquire, convert, and retain your target audience, you also need to engage them. This means finding the right way to connect with your people through various stages of their customer journey.
For most companies, customer service and customer engagement will go hand-in-hand. That’s because all the various ways you interact with customers have a direct impact on engagement. Ideally, your interactions should cause your customers to feel and act positively toward your business.
If the concept of creating more engaged customers seems a little overwhelming, don’t panic. It actually comes down to three simple rules.
Rule 1: Create Amazing Customer Experiences
As of 2021, 30% of customers say they’re willing to pay more for excellent service. This is a 6% increase over 2019.
When customers get amazing experiences from a company, naturally feel more engaged by that brand, and they are more loyal, ideally they become your brand ambassador. There are a number of issues that can damage the quality of your customer experiences, such as forcing people to wait too long to speak to a service rep, or not giving your consumers enough communication options. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to eliminate most of these issues.
Outsourcing your customer experience strategy means you can access exactly the number of dedicated support agents you need to manage the peaks and troughs in demand for your company. Crucially, it also means you can leverage the talents of professionals who feel comfortable working to support customers on a range of channels (so you can deliver omnichannel experiences). Plus, you get expertise which boosts your chances of a first-time resolution.
Sure, having an in-house team of professionals to assist with customer service is a good start, but you can significantly differentiate your company and outshine the competition with outsourcing.
Rule 2: Make Your Brand Relatable
Successful customer experience starts with making the customer experience as smooth and efficient as possible, but there are other elements to consider too. For instance, you need to create something for your customers to relate to. This means building an authentic, meaningful, and engaging brand.
Create a set of brand guidelines for your employees to follow whenever they’re sharing content with customers or creating marketing campaigns. These guidelines will also help your in-house and outsourced service agents to deliver a consistent tone of voice to your target audience.
Your guidelines should be based on the specific values of your brand. Remember, 86% of customers say brand authenticity is crucial when they’re deciding which companies they like.
Once you’ve figured out how your brand should look, sound and act, make sure you have policies in place to maintain a consistent presence across all channels. You’d be surprised how easy it is for companies to start sounding inconsistent after a while.
The more you invest time and effort into making your brand stand out, the more likely you’ll be to attract more customers, and keep hold of your existing ones. Remember, pay attention to your customer’s perception of your brand and what you stand for. This will help you to determine whether you’re actually creating the right image or not.
Rule 3: Focus on Retention First
Finally, one of the most important things you can do when you’re enhancing customer engagement, is focus on the customers you already have, over the ones you’re going to try and attract in the future. Too many companies make the mistake of putting all of their attention on getting new clients. This often leads to existing customer relationships being overlooked.
However, the reality is your return customers are the ones that give you the most value. Not only do they spend more cash and buy more often than their counterparts, repeat clients can also advocate for your brand and help you to improve your reputation online. Their word of mouth and reviews are excellent for unlocking new opportunities.
So, think about how you keep your customers happy after you’ve already converted with them. What are you doing to help your clients feel like they want to engage with you again and again? Are you making your customers feel appreciated with special offers and deals? Do you go above and beyond to give them the service they want on the channels they like? Are you putting your customers at the center of all activities?
Once again, your customer service outsourcing strategy will help a lot with this process. They’ll ensure you can continue to focus on keeping your existing customers happy, while also improving your chances of attracting clients in the future.
It’s Time to Master Customer Engagement
Customer engagement is the key to not only retaining your existing customers but making your brand more appealing to future clients too. If you want to outshine the competition and earn a consistent income, then you need to be a master of engagement. Being ahead of the customer lifecycle and offering in each touchpoint the channel of choice inclusively automation and self-service.
Contact us today to find out how we can help you improve customer engagement with outsourced experience and customer service strategies.
