When you’re running a business, you have a reputation to protect. No matter how great your products or services may be, one negative review from a disappointed customer can already impact your brand. Apart from that, it can also be that nothing is said about you at all. While this can sometimes be good, it can also be dangerous. It makes your brand sleepy, weak, and less competitive.
To protect your brand reputation, customer engagement is critical. You may have heard a lot about this, especially when you’ve been in the business for quite some time now. Customer engagement, as its name suggests, refers to how you relate, interact, and engage with your customers. Naturally, this has to be positive, such that you consistently gain positive reviews from your clients.
Like all other aspects of running a business, customer engagement works to be a long-term investment for your company. Yes, it can first start as an arduous and time-consuming task, especially when you’re still at the beginning stages. But, all these efforts aren’t only going to be futile. Eventually, they’ll pay off.
That said, here are some of the benefits of customer engagement for your brand’s reputation:
1. Results In Better Customer Service
One of the most fundamental equations in business is this: the stronger your customer engagement is, the higher is the likelihood that you can provide better customer service. Like a domino effect, the better your customer service, the higher also is the possibility of earning a steady income. In business, this is a huge deal. After all, the core of all your efforts should be the desire not just to gain a steady income, but also to have better customer service.
The more engaged and connected you are with your customers, the more satisfied they are with all the offerings that you’re providing. Your customers are more likely to stay loyal, and even promote your business to their friends and family when they have a pleasant experience in your hands.
Along this line, make it a point to have customers rave about your business and talk about you online. Whenever they do, engage with them and respond to them, too. Not only does this improve your customer engagement, but it also strengthens your position in the market by having more people get to know about your brand’s existence and competence.
2. Shows That You’re Obsessed About Your Customers
You may have heard of the common phrase that the customer is always right. In general, there’s a lot of truth in this statement. Remember that in managing a business and growing your brand, one of the key players are the customers. Without them, you cease to survive. So, at some point, you have to show that you’re obsessed with your customers.
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, will tell you that obsession with your brand’s customers is one of the essential secrets in growing a brand. This doesn’t mean being a slave to all of your customers’ whims. It merely means that your company culture is centered on your brand, which is the answer to the needs of your customers.
In this regard, the more that you engage with your customers, the more that you show you love them enough and are grateful for them that you wish to keep them. You don’t want to give your customers a reason to patronize another brand instead.
Here are some ways for you to show this obsession towards your customers through customer engagement:
- Serve your customers in the manner that best suits the kind of business model that you have
- Be there whenever your customers need you (e.g., always having an ample stock of products on hand, especially the best sellers)
- Be sure your brand’s website or online shop also operates strong enough during peak hours or when your customers are usually shopping
Learn more about how to apply the strategies mentioned above through customer engagement by visiting podium.com.
3. Humanizes Your Brand
Humanizing your brand means that beyond the face of the corporate entity that you are, your brand stays human. By this, your customers should feel that you’re approachable and that you’ve got emotions. Robots aren’t operating your business. Whenever they’ve got a comment on your site, for instance, whether this is good or bad, humanizing your brand through customer engagement means that you give ample time to respond to all these. Whenever needed, you correct your business mistakes, too.
People are more likely to buy from brands that they can identify with and reach out to quickly. Should they have any concern, they don’t like this simply to fall on deaf ears. As a part of your customer engagement efforts, have a plan for identifying and sharing these values with your customers. That way, your customers also continue to feel as if they’re a big part of something important. Whenever they share words about your business, they feel like they’re doing so because this creates positive changes in the lives of other potential customers that have yet to hear about your brand.
4. Strengthens Your Customer Benefits Program
This section applies if you already have a customer benefits program. At the heart of business operations also comes in the perks or rewards that you give to loyal customers. But, while you may have good intentions in setting these up, they can only prove to be useless if your customers aren’t even interested in getting all these. With customer engagement, your customer benefits program also improves.
Why is this important? While a customer benefits program is generally for your customers, there are marketing implications and advantages for you, too. These customer benefits programs may encourage your customers to spend more and buy more of what they need from your brand, rather than from another one. That way, they earn the points that entitles them to discounts and incentives.
A strong customer benefits program can also improve your brand’s reputation. More customers will be pleased about you, simply because they feel rewarded for all their efforts of choosing to buy from you than from another.
Here are other advantages that a customer benefits program can bring to for your brand:
- Increases your revenue
- Introduces your business to new and potential customers
- Increases customer loyalty, thereby also improving overall reputation
- Exciting your customers by ensuring repeat purchases from your brand
5. Enables Personalization Of Customer Communication
Yes, perhaps, you may argue that you’ve already been engaging with your customers. You reply to them, and you do respond to all their concerns. But, are you sure that this is enough? If you’re continually sending spam replies or auto-generated responses to your customers without putting up any follow-up, then you’re still failing. Your customer engagement is still weak. Hence, the need for personalization of customer communication.
The more personal you sound with your replies, the more satisfied your customers also will be. This makes them feel as if you genuinely are concerned about keeping them within your brand’s circle.
6. Gives You Metrics To Measure Customer Experience
As mentioned earlier, the goal of customer engagement has always been to provide a more pleasant customer experience. You don’t just take the time and effort to talk to and interact with your customers without the desire to make them happy and satisfied by purchasing from you all the time.
Therefore, the more that you engage with your customers, the more that you gain access to the metrics that can help you measure the overall customer experience. In that manner, you’re even better assured that all your efforts don’t just go to waste. Keep in mind that customer experience always depends on the customer engagement strategies that you have in place.
Here are some of the metrics that you can use to your brand’s advantage:
- Support Ticket Trends: Support ticket trends refer to the consistent problems that many of your customers may be complaining about. These are recurring issues that are taking quite a significant time to resolve. Some of the common solutions that you may apply include having a Customer FAQ section, editing product manuals, or revising products and services.
- Customer Feedback. A majority of customers will always want to provide feedback about the products that they’ve used as long as there’s a platform that would allow them to do so. Provide this through customer engagement.
- Customer Recommendations Apart from asking for feedback, solicit for recommendations as well. Through engaging with your customer, you gain the means to determine what areas or features of your products and services you need to improve on.
Conclusion
As a brand and a business in general, you’re not only an entity that runs off like a robot. For the very reason that human beings are behind your business, this means that your brand shouldn’t be without an emotional connection with your customers. This connection is what customer engagement is all about. As can be summarized from above, the more engaged your customers are, the more that they spend for and patronize your goods and services. No matter what, apart from profits, your brand’s goal should always be to provide a pleasant customer experience. That way, you continue to grow and be competitive.
Carlene Cetina
Carlene Cetina is a web developer for creating websites or improving the appearance and functions of an existing website. Carlene is responsible for creating a website’s layout and integrating different content, graphics, and applications into the platform.
Carlene loves to write articles about web development and take care of her pets during her free time.
