Why customer engagement is beneficial?
What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement is the act of building a relationship with the people who are buying what you’re selling either B2C or B2B or an emotional connection between a customer and a brand. It’s the sum total of all the ways you connect with your customers: the emails, the phone calls, conversations on social media, and more. Highly engaged customers buy more, promote more, and demonstrate more loyalty. Gallup research shows that a fully-engaged customer represents 23% more revenue than average.
5 Benefits of customer engagement
1. Stronger relationships with customers and improved loyalty
An effective customer engagement strategy can be pivotal in helping brands connect better with their customers in a way that makes them want to continue to be their customers. If you put in the effort to engage your customers across various channels and touchpoints above and beyond what’s necessary to get them to make a purchase, you are likely to form stronger relationships with them. If you interact with them regularly about what’s relevant to them, keeping in mind their needs, priorities, motivations, and aspirations, you constantly remind them that you care.
2. Improved customer retention
Engaged customers will continue to build long-term relationships with the brand. In fact, research shows that businesses that focus on customer engagement strategies are more likely to make customers spend more on their products and services and convert them into loyalists of the brand. Research by Bain & Company states that a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profits. This and many other studies have concluded time and again that engaged customers are responsible for driving a significant percentage of a business’ total revenue.
3. Boosts marketing efficiency
Modern marketing is all about engaging customers. In several cases, marketing efforts go down the drain as they fail to capture customer's interests. With effective customer engagement strategies in place, marketing efforts are expected to garner better results as they are more likely to capture the customers’ attention.
4. Shorter sales cycle
One of the key benefits of a customer engagement model is that it helps businesses attain a shorter sales cycle. In this system, customers and other prospects can utilize a customer engagement portal to instantly access the information they need irrespective of the stage of the buying process that they are on.
5. Better Customer Service
When you have a habit and a history of customer engagement, you are more likely to provide better customer service. Consumers are more likely to stick around and even tell their friends when they have a good customer service experience. Part of that experience is being accessible online. AdWeek reports that 80% of consumers use digital devices to make a connection with customer service. Plus, 71% of consumers say they have ended a relationship with a brand due to poor customer service.
