There are moments when you glance up and notice a red-faced customer marching towards you with a look in their eye and know that everything in the moment in which you’re about to be engaged is going to be challenging. You take a deep breath, you bring your company’s core values into your line of vision, and before the words from the seemingly hostile customer are elicited, there you stand with a big bright smile, and say, “Hello, and how can I help you today.” Remember, every single interaction between a brand and a buyer represents customer engagement.
Customer Approach — Engagement Alert!
So as the customer approaches you, fists pumping, mouth agape and ready to spew a tirade of complaints, you realize suddenly noise isn’t emitting from their lips. Why is this? Because in the moment of recognizing a customer’s angst, rage, confusion or disgust — any state of emotion — disarming them is your best defense. Setting a level playing field makes for a much more seamless and much less tense conversation.
Regardless of their response, be stoic, be professional and calmly ask, “What would the ultimate outcome you would like to see so we can resolve your issue?” You’d be surprised that “I want my money back” sits lower on the list of demands. And that’s because people simply don’t want something tangible, they need something reassuring, and that’s where engagement comes into play.
After all, as the angry customer approaches you, the word ‘engagement’ is more ambiguous than the word ‘service’. This makes it difficult to pinpoint the exact moment the customer engagement should commence. The answer of course is immediately. Theoretically, an angry customer will remind you about “the kind of service” they expect or didn’t receive. Rarely does a customer remind you of the way they would like to engage in resolving the issue.
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Turning the tables and handling the situation with the talk of solutions is a kind of diamond-in-the-rough real-time engagement that can only be mastered with a lot of patience and a lot of practice. Let’s see how else we can master that real-time customer engagement. If you’ve done your customer research well, then you’ll know exactly where your target audience is browsing, purchasing and communicating with your brand. And when you’ve got that research, your business’ customer engagement will be nothing less than stellar.
Looking at Every Angle of Communication
Thirty years ago, customer engagement was peer-to-peer and handled over the phone. Today, in the retail model, regardless of where your customers are, one thing is for certain: you need to be there too. Engagement happens at your brick-and-mortar locations, over the phone and apps, and let us tell you about social media. You enjoy advertising on Facebook, and there is an option to purchase the item via the app, but the customer has questions about the size, or color, or return policy, none of which are listed on the app. If customers can’t ask, or lose patience sending a DM only to get a robotic automated response, you’ve most likely lost a customer for life. And remember, the power of social media and the ability to spread feelings about a customer engagement experience, or lack of one, holds power in one simple thumb-down emoji.
With the simple addition of a chat widget, this potential customer’s query could have been handled by your team in a matter of seconds. And the end of this story may well have been a sale. Not to mention a “thumbs up” emoji for a job well done.
Truly Excel in Customer Engagement
So it’s established that your business needs to have an effective presence on every platform. To truly excel in customer engagement, you need to have all these communication channels funneling into one central location: Facebook one day, Instagram the next, maybe an email to follow up. This way, your customers are being helped in real time using an omnichannel customer engagement approach. That’s power!
Now let’s talk about analytics: after all, you do need to know your customers’ behaviors if you want to offer them the very best real-time engagement.
- Who are your unique monthly visitors? This is a vital part of how you run new campaigns and track success. By tracking users who register for the first time, you can offer a percentage-off coupon incentive for the entire first purchase. Call them out and follow up with a thank you for visiting. Continue the engagement.
Keeping track of what users are searching for helps you keep your inventory stocked and allows users to offer comments on other shades, brands and sizes that they may not currently find using your search tool. Redirection using a “something you don’t see” tool actively engages the user to stay online and feel that they are a welcomed and contributing part of your online community.
And if it’s an affordable software tool, having a price-match offering is a surefire engagement opportunity that will keep your customers coming back for life.
- Who is doing what, and when? Driving engagement means more than making a hashmark every time a user logs in or signs up. Observe and investigate how your users are shopping, browsing, buying and searching on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This can turn campaigns into successful sales strategies and can take your marketing to a whole new personalized level. Your competition is tracking behaviors too, so keep ahead by staying engaged with your user’s presence when they’re in your store and shopping online.
- Frequency of in-app events: Have you ever logged into your favorite app only to see the same SALE screen offering 80% off what is already 90% off? That’s straight-up lazy campaigning and indicates an online store more interested in pushing merchandise that never sold in the first place. Continually retarget your current audience, home in on your demographics and set time aside to rework your in-app campaigns. Yes, have a clearance tab, but not continually flashing at the opening of the home screen.
Clearance items don’t drive engagement. Thoughtful merchandising campaigns do. Metrics evaluate the efficacy of every purchase, and every search helps you build on how to make your next campaign flashier, more modern and trending, and keep you forward-thinking. Use them to work in your favor and your customer engagement will have carts filling up faster than the competition.
- Make the App “Stickier”: Mastering customer engagement is a collaborative process. Do your users feel an emotional connection? If not,then you had best find a way to make your app relatable, fun and functional. If a user can’t wholly engage, they’ll simply seek a competitor’s app. Here’s how to master real-time engagement with your social media presence: have a strong story and background and intertwine that story throughout your app.
- Poor Support: If this article needs to drive home one key point, it’s that your business will NEVER master real-time customer engagement if you aren’t offering stellar support at every level and on every communication channel. You’ve designed a terrific app, and it has all the whistles and bells for an engaging customer experience. But if it only works when you do things in a particular order, or it tends to end the user’s session after five minutes every time they log in, now they need customer support or a way to ask the community for help. Does your business have the right amount of support when thousands of users start calling customer service or frantically DMing Facebook for assistance?
If your company lacks resources for live support, at least have a well-written FAQ section to work around any obstacles until they can reach somebody from support.
Beware the Power of Influencers
Lastly, conversational engagement is actually on the rise, so much so that customers’ expectations have completely evolved when it comes to response times from brands. Customers want to communicate in real time and typically expect answers within minutes. Live chat rules the day and offers immediate real-time communication, and can often redirect the customer to the FAQ page to find their solution.
The point is, human connection, a messaging app, live chat, email, even a simple phone call have continued to increase in popularity. To master real-time customer engagement, prioritize your omnichannel communication strategies, teach your agents to actively listen, speak with empathy and follow through to close the loop. Customer engagement is a 360° experience from end to end.
If possible, dedicate a team to work your social media channels looking for influencers. An influencer is not necessarily “famous” or offering valuable insights based on their follower count. To influence on social media is to make a positive and forward-thinking impact, to drive sales. When deciding who to use in your next campaign, don’t just look at the vanity stats (amount of traffic, social count, etc.). Dig for an influencer as if you were interviewing for an important role at your company, like a recruiter would. What is their percentage of buying traffic? Have they got positive engagement on social posts? Are they being shared around in relevant networks?
Use influencers as positive marketing strategies; after all, they too are trying to master real-time customer engagement. Bringing one or two aboard can really enhance your business model.
In the constantly evolving world of customer communication, one thing is for sure: if you want to build trust, inspire loyalty, and — ultimately — earn more customers, you need to be having meaningful, holistic conversations.
Mikkel Andreassen is Head of Solution Consulting at Dixa. He is passionate about customer experience in every color of the beautiful customer engagement spectrum and loves building great connections with his customers, which often lead to meaningful friendships that last a lifetime and inspire his work. Driven by the genuine belief that CX is the pivotal force that drives a successful business, he is currently at the helm of Dixa’s customer experience strategy.
