6 Best Practices of Effective Messages for Customer Engagement
Working with clients requires sticking to certain principles, having a well-defined strategy, and a clear and consistent tone of voice. Having clear guidelines for working with clients is an absolute must for any field, at every stage of the relationship.
But, creating a strong bond with your audience can be a long and winding road with loads of gotchas, and avoiding them can be a real pain in the neck! We here at 13Chats feel you, so relax and read on. This blog post covers some of the most burning questions about effective customer engagement, and is packed with tips to help you boost your engagement rate in no time!
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What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement is the process of building long-term customer engagement with a brand. Almost any business book or publication about business, international marketing conferences, and marketing gurus sound like a broken record — attracting and engaging customers is key.
Moreover, according to Deloitte and Touche, 60% of companies were more profitable compared to companies that ignored customer retention. So whether you want to or not — learn by heart that customer service is the cornerstone of your business.
In recent years, there have been many studies in the field of business interaction with clients. Among which we can single out the following concepts:
- Relationship marketing;
- Customer loyalty;
- Customer focus.
For example, Chubbies is extremely sweet in this email, taking care of those among their clients who find Mother’s or Father’s Day too heartbreaking. Frankly speaking, if I got such an email and found it useful, I would appreciate the company greatly. Does it fuel up customers’ loyalty? You betcha.
The concept of relationship marketing appeared in the mid-90s. It emphasizes the need for building long-term trusting relationships and is closely related to achieving and strengthening customer loyalty.
Why is customer engagement so important?
In case you are still unsure about investing in customer relationships, here is some rationale for strengthening activities to increase customer loyalty:
- Loyal customers bring high profits. According to Deloitte and Touche, 60% of companies that focused on engagement were more profitable compared to companies that ignored customer retention.
- Attracting new customers is more expensive than retaining loyal ones. This golden rule always rings true — it’s 16 times more expensive to find new customers compared to growing a loyal audience step-by-step.
- Satisfied customers come back again and again… — … and bring their friends and family! Even with all of the most up-to-date stats and tools, you should never underestimate the power of word of mouth. People love being loved, customers love feeling wanted, so they will choose you if they know you appreciate them.
However, sending a post-purchase “thanks” or a birthday card won’t win your clients’ hearts. Take a look at what you need to keep in mind while improving client loyalty by focusing on creating meaningful engagement.
Customer engagement best practices: Ideas to improve customer engagement
Individual approach
This phrase has already become quite hackneyed, but guess what? It works! The principle of an individual approach means searching for specific solutions for specific clients, the ability to deviate from your standards.
It is important to remember that even if the client is a legal entity, you should interact with them like you would an ordinary person. Emphasize your respect for the client — always address them by name, be polite, and pay attention to their preferences and adapt to them.
Follow National Geographic’s approach. They want to bring useful content and increase engagement with customers rather than stuff the subscriber’s inbox with garbage info. That’s why they ask their audience to specify topics that interest them. Consider asking what kind of help your clients need or what they would like to know about your services?
Comprehensive services
All methods of working with clients are ultimately aimed at ensuring that the client buys goods or services and, if possible, does it repeatedly or more often. An excellent option is to adhere to the principle of comprehensive services. It’s necessary to not only offer a product but also a service, and not only one but a whole range, to fully satisfy the needs of your clients.
Professionalism and trust
A client applies for certain services because they want to receive professional help, or they buy a product, wanting to be sure of its quality. To that end, show the client your professionalism to inspire their confidence. For this, it is important to meet deadlines, work transparently, and be transparent with your clients.
Professionalism isn’t only about proudly stating your beauties, but also about acknowledging your faux-pas. If you messed up — be so kind to admit it, like Pluralsight did.
Regulations and codes
A factor in ensuring civilized interaction with clients in many companies is the creation of regulations and codes for the work of personnel with clients. Usually, there is a code of client rights and a system for monitoring how your team follows the code.
There is no doubt that it is impossible to have a stable customer base without your company directly interacting with customers. These interactions seriously influence the process of making consumer decisions, their attitude towards the company, and ultimately, the volume of sales and profits you bring in.
The remuneration system in your company should be built in such a way that it encourages employees to use customer-oriented behavior. Differentiate wages by this parameter, and take into account the employee’s behavior when making decisions about their professional or career growth.
Work with clients at every stage
There are specific customer engagement marketing examples for working with clients at different stages of interaction. In the onboarding stage, be as timely as possible, don’t pút off meetings with the client, find out their name and other information in advance to prepare for the presentation as thoroughly as possible.
Imagine your clients don’t have sufficient funds. Come up with an option for a loan, payment in installments, or discounts. If they have the funds but are hesitating — promise some kind of bonus, like additional services. Email marketing is a goldmine of such examples, take abandoned carts, for instance.
The user has left something in the cart — WP+Standard offers a free service providing the user finishes their order. Seducing!
After the contract has expired, don’t hurry to delete them from your list. From time to time, you remind them about your brand, notify them about new offers, discounts, or offers, and be open to any and all future collaboration. These actions will both help ensure a good relationship with your customers and get the most out of that relationship.
Threadless not only reminds customers about their brand but also suggests a discount to revive the lost touch with the customer.
However, you can’t save a spot in your customers’ loyal hearts with email marketing alone. You can follow the above-mentioned steps through another channel. Ta-dah, here come the chatbots!
Use chatbots for automated customer communication
Chatbots are programs capable of imitating a user’s communication with one or more people at a time. As a rule, they are created for popular messengers like Telegram, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp.
Adding a live chat widget to your site with 13Chats is a great opportunity to boost your business performance.
Your target audience likely already uses these apps every day to communicate with family and friends. Using this communication channel, an online store can successfully stand out among competitors and win a more loyal audience. Today, if you do not attract the attention of users with the help of a chatbot, you will lose to a competitor.
Use a 13Chats chatbot to automate repetitive processes and interactive communication with the user. Chatbots can learn, process, and memorize previously used commands, faces and voices, and even determine someone’s geolocation — you name it.
Benefits of 13Chats chatbots for conversational customer engagement
Communicating with your target audience using chatbots has a number of advantages.
- High level of engagement. According to a study by CTIA, the average time to view a message in a messenger is about 90 seconds, and with email — 90 minutes. Therefore, chatbots for instant messengers are a much faster way to communicate with customers.
- Functionality and cost. Many companies still use SMS, although its capabilities for inserting images, videos, or, for example, hyperlinks are rather limited. Buttons, GIFs, and other calls to action are available for messenger chatbots. Plus, having paid once to develop a chatbot, you don’t have to waste your budget on human resources.
- Interactivity. Unlike traditional advertising channels, for example, TV, billboards, radio, and so on, where one-way communication takes place, chatbots are able to interact live with the audience and provide them with a choice. Want a bot to interact with visitors via a website? Provide customer support through the live chat widget.
Final thoughts
Well-built communication processes aimed at studying the complaints, claims, and opinions of your customers are vital to your success. Chatbots allow you to adjust your strategy and make changes on the fly with ease. The key is tracking customers’ reactions to ongoing advertising campaigns, to the level of service, and to indicators of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
Chatbots are one of the most promising innovations for the eCommerce industry. Users no longer need to call support to resolve issues, most of which are the same type. In cases where a customer requires personalized assistance, the chatbot can switch it to a call center operator. This both speeds up the process of interaction with clients and increases the efficiency of your business while saving you money.
Small businesses can also benefit from implementing an automated chat solution. Lack of time, a small number of employees, poorly developed technical capacity – all this affects the quality and efficiency of interaction with customers. Chatbots can help you avoid these problems and build brand loyalty. Start chatbotting with 13Chats — it’s free and amazing!
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