According to a survey by Forbes Insights and Pegasystems that covered more than 200 U.S. executives, 88% of leaders have created a position responsible for customer engagement in the past 12 months.
When taken seriously by companies, customer engagement creates an amazing opportunity for businesses to get to know their customers, build long-term relationships with them, and ultimately enhance their business performance.
To make it last, as in any other human relationship, creativity and innovation are the main ingredients to a successful formula.
Work with your customer advocates
A simple way to define a customer advocate is a happy customer who promotes the product they love. Customers create engagement just by spreading the word about the product, services, and brand.
They are willing to engage in activities such as writing online reviews, bringing people to events, providing product feedback, social media shares, and even blogging and creating videos. The best part is these customers provide an authentic, third-party voice to validate a company’s claims.
It is important to empower customer advocates through social media. Advocates can be excellent community leaders who create engagement through word-of-mouth referral. One way to find customer advocates is by targeting followers who consistently share the company’s online publications.
Once you spot them, you can work on building stronger relationships with follower advocates by engaging in different activities like rewarding them with coupons, special offers, or discounts; sharing customer reviews on social media and sending invites to exclusive events or private sales, for example.
Use AI to go above and beyond customer satisfaction
Technology is constantly creating tools to improve company goals. According to the Forbes survey mentioned above, 100% of leaders interviewed are currently using artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to customer satisfaction actions.
AI provides the most advanced tools for companies to go that extra mile with customers. It allows companies to strengthen customer satisfaction objectives such as:
Instant Gratification: customers demand superior services constantly in almost any sort of interaction. By introducing ‘Smart Chatbots’ to their services, companies using AI are able to fulfill requests immediately or provide instant options to customers’ requirements and desires. These services also allow quick communication by chat rather than irritating phone calls, and immediate online payment options rather than face-to-face transactions.
Personalization: By including predictive analytics solutions, AI technology can transform the way companies personalize interactions with their customers. Automated data collection can help anticipate customer needs and allow companies to create unique and personalized profiles, identifying their purchasing patterns so customer service representatives can provide highly-relevant replies.
Employee Tracking: Traditional models of tracking/rating employee performance in the industry were based on negative feedback from customers. Advanced technology can track an employee’s performance before it gets to that point, allowing those in managerial positions to correct or reinforce certain duties or tasks in order to better their performance.
Adopt blockchain technology if you want to impress your customers
Another key trend is the rapid adoption of decentralized ledger technology for all facets of life.
Companies that adopt blockchain will speed the delivery of their services, better track the lifetime behavior of customer interactions to deliver enhanced service, lower fees and ultimately democratize the customer experience. Sometimes the easiest path to success is starting small and placing one product or service on the blockchain to run a pilot program and get comfortable with the shift.
When it comes to customer engagement in today’s fast-paced world, customers demand superior service WHEN they want it, HOW they want it, and WHERE they want it.
Leveraging tools such as customer advocates, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology are proven ways to create mutually-beneficial results for your company, as well as your loyal customers.
This article is written by Alex Lopatine :
With more than twenty years of international business experience, Alex Lopatine is recognized as a visionary strategist in the realms of finance, banking and technology. His leadership has leveraged technological innovations to disrupt entrenched industries for the benefit of consumers, investors and partners. Get to know more about him here!
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