Do you have your customer engagement plan in place? If you haven’t, our guide on creating an effective customer engagement plan will help you. If you’ve got your plan in place, though, it is time to take it off the drawing board and put it into action. Successful customer engagement takes a bit of more work, though. These seven steps will help you take your plan from fluff to tough, and keep the conversation going.
1. Fine Tune Your Strategy
Customer engagement plan. Check. Budget. Check. Schedule. Check. You’ve got everything in place. However, before your plan goes live, take a step back to fine-tune your strategy. A few tweaks at the start can save you time and bad feedback down the line.
Take a while to check whether your strategy sticks to the point. Your message should be clear and you should not overwhelm or distract your customers. Keep it simple. At times, less can be more, so your strategy need not be very elaborate to start with. Rather than bombarding your customers with information, simply pique their interest to get started.
2. Stay Relevant
One of the biggest mistakes that people make in their customer engagement strategy is to try to speak with one voice to their entire customer base. Not all customers are alike and what is relevant to one may be irrelevant to another. Keep your messages specific to users to build brand loyalty.
For example, if you’ve launched a gaming app and you’ve reached the much-coveted 100 customers, start the conversation going with a relevant conversation starter. Rather than broadcasting the same message to all customers, why not reach out to just those who have configured their app incorrectly? Or how about those who’ve used a certain amount of their subscription? Keeping your messages relevant will have better results.
3. Get Personal
No one likes receiving messages that don’t have a personal touch. This is why the majority of bulk messages and unsolicited mail goes unanswered and probably moves to trash faster than you can blink. Adopting a personal tone and go a long way in improving customer relationships.
Actively engaging with your customers with a personal touch can involve something as simple as addressing your customers by name. Keep your messages relevant to your customers’ likes, past interactions and history and they will be less likely to feel that they’ve just been hit by a bulk messaging campaign.
A note of caution, though – avoid being over-friendly or over-familiar with your customers. You don’t want your brand to appear anything other than genuine, and your team definitely should not come off as creepy.
4. Cater to Cultural Differences
Be aware of holidays throughout the world, or at the very least, in all places where your customers are. You definitely wouldn’t want to send a business message to customers in the US on the Fourth of July, nor would you want to miss out on an opportunity to tap into the spending spree of local festivities. Remembering these small yet all-important details can have a positive impact on your customer engagement plan.
5. Host an Event
Hosting an event can take your customer engagement strategy to a whole new level because events bring you face to face with your customers in a more relaxed environment. Your event may be one to extend the reach of your business or simply to appreciate your customers and build a good rapport with them.
Irrespective of the type of event you’re hosting, keep it creative if you are to make an impact in your customers’ minds. Think about how you can tap into the market while making the event fun. Interesting brands have loyal customers and better brand repute.
6. Reward Loyalty
Customer loyalty closely follows on the heels of your customer engagement plan. The more you engage, the happier your customers are and the more likely they are to increase spending and promote your business. Reward your customers with loyalty points, discounts or offers and you’ll have satisfied customers who are even more loyal to your brand.
7. Ask for Feedback
Finally, your customer engagement plan is never set in stone. Keep asking your customers for feedback so that you can fine-tune your customer engagement strategy still further. Flexibility based on feedback keeps the conversation going positively for you and your customers.
One Stop Solution
Are these steps too overwhelming for you? Don’t worry! You can take an easier route in your customer engagement endeavors by opting for a customer engagement management platform or customer engagement software. One such software is Asista that is designed to connect your teams and customers under one roof. Using this platform you can effective collaborate and communicate internally and engage with your customers wherever they are keeping them highly engaged and loyal to your business.