Customers are your company’s lifeblood. You need them to buy your stuff and generate revenue, so without them, you would absolutely not have a business at all.
That’s why customer engagement is so important. By better getting to know your customers, and by doing everything you can to make their life as a customer of your business as easy as it can possibly be, you can not only make your customers happy, but you can encourage them to be loyal to your brand, and also convince them to tell their social circle about your company too.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the best ways your business can increase customer engagement and improve customer relations right now:
1. Use social media the right way
If you run a business, chances are you use social media to promote it, ut if that is all you do with social media you are doing it wrong.
Yes, you need to promote the product and services you sell, but if all you do on social media is push your products art eh people who follow you, then you will not build positive relationships with your customers and you will struggle to get much good community engagement.
If customer engagement is your goal, you need to start using social media differently. You need to use it as a means of connecting with your followers and that means cresting fewer promotional pots and more posts that are gunny, engaging, informative or simply speaking to your customers on a more personal basis. Create content that actively makes them want to read or watch and your customer engagement levels will improve drastically as a result.
2. Start using AI chatbots
If you want to improve customer engagement, you need to offer the best online support chat for website businesses. AI chatbots are a big part of this right now. They are good because they can be used as the first port of call for costumes who may want to know more about the products you sell or the services you offer, or who may have an important issue they need to ask about.
The chatbot will give them access to instant answers in many cases, so they will not need to wait for an email reply or spend ages on the phone trying to speak to someone, which will make them much more positively inclined to your business overall.
Of course, AI chatbots can’t do everything, so you also need to ensure that you have plenty of well-trained customer service agents available too, but there is no denying that chatbots will save you time and money while also increasing customer engagement in the most positive way possible.
3. Take good care of people using your free trials
If you are selling a product or survive that it is possible to offer a free trial on, then doing so is a really good way to hook potential customers and show them what your services can really do for them.
In terms of customer engagement, once you have convinced them to take the free trial, you need to go above and beyond to ensure that they have a good experience during that trial. A good way to do this is by communicating with them on a personal level. Send them emails welcoming them to the service and asking them if there is anything you can do for them/any help they may need.
Monitor what they are doing, and get in touch with them to point out that they have not used X or Y feature, and do they need any help accessing it or any more information on its benefits.
Thank them for being a part of your community. Basically do everything you can to make them feel welcome and more often than not, you will find that they do take the leap to become paid customers after all.
4. Set up a VIP section
If you have already secured a customer and they are loyal to your company, then it is so very important that you show them your appreciation for sticking by your business. One of the best ways to do this is undoubtedly to set up some kind of VIP section that rewards their loyalty.
This could be something as simple as enabling loyal customers to earn points on all their purchases or setting up a VIP area on your website where they can get first dibs on newly launched products and services before they go on general sale – it does not matter as long as it shows your appreciation and gives your loyal customers something over and above the normal level of service you offer. Loyal customers are your bread and butter, so treat them right.
5. Create content they actually want
A big part of marketing your business, whatever it may be, in 2022, is undoubtedly creating online content, whether it be a blog post or an Instagram story.
If you want to increase customer engagement, then you need to put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that your content is actually the kind of content they want to see. For example, if you run a clothing company, then your customers are more likely to want visual content like videos and photographs where they can see the clothing being worn, whereas if you run an accountancy company, you might get more reach by creating quality written content that highlights important issues such as tax relief and how to determine if an expense is tax-deductible.
Study your target audience, see what kinds of content they are already sharing and take your inspiration from your findings to create similarly engaging content that they will love, and you should see an improvement in your customer engagement levels.
6. Go above and beyond
If you want your customers to really love, you, then you need to go above and beyond their expectations for you. For example, if you offer standard shopping, ut you actually get their package to them next day, they are going to be suitably impressed, or if you pop a free gift in with each of their orders, they will be blown away by your generosity.
Depending on what your business is, there will be lots of ways you can go above and beyond and show your customers just how much value you can offer them. One thing, however, you must never do, is promise something you cannot deliver, as that will have the exact opposite effect and turn your customers off your company for good.
7. Set up a listening center
Many companies today are using listening centers to improve customer engagement. These are basically platforms that enable the customer to get in touch with suggestions about the kinds of things you could do to improve your company for their benefit.
This is a really powerful way of improving engagement because customers really love it when they think that a business actually cares about them and what they think. Of course, if you set up a listening center, but you never do anything about any of the suggestions, you will quickly turn the customers off again, So, you need to be willing to actually listen to the suggestions provided and implement them where it makes sense to do so.
8. Train your staff
Training your customer service staff to a high standard is probably one of the most important things you can do if you want to increase customer engagement. Why? Because they are at the forefront of providing service to your customers. They are the public face of your business, and if they are rude or ineffective, this will not reflect well on your company.
However, if your customer service team are highly trained, know all there is to know about the products and services you sell, are able to help people quickly and effectively, and are always willing to have a smile and a bit of positive chat ready for customers, this will reflect really well on you and your company and you will see a positive increase in engagement.
9. Continuous development
If you want to keep increasing customer engagement in the future, you need to be willing to keep checking your current practices and improving them where necessary. You need to be willing to plow more time, money and training into your business to increase engagement. You simply cannot afford to rest on your laurels, because if you do, it will only be a matter of time before the competition overtakes you, make the customers feel more important than you do, and ultimately steals your business away from you.
As you can see, there are lots of fairly simple things you can do to increase customer engagement, and doing so will not only help you to retain more of your customers, turning them into loyal regularly, but it will also help you to bring in new customers to strengthen your business too.
Photo: Pexel
