It is more costly to acquire new customers than to keep an existing client. Your business’s revenue will be more predictable if you have clients that pay you each month. How can you make sure this happens?
Customers must be satisfied with your service, and you need to keep them coming back. Customer engagement is key to building loyal customers and allowing you to stop worrying about cash flow.
Here’s the problem: Companies make many mistakes when trying to implement customer engagement strategies. These mistakes can lead to a reverse effect and higher customer churn.
What are the mistakes to avoid when developing your customer engagement strategy for customers? Let’s take a closer view.
7 major customer engagement mistakes
It’s better to learn from others’ mistakes than from your own. This article will help you think of ways to engage customers. These are seven common mistakes made by other companies (and they don’t have to be yours).
- Instead of providing value, focus on selling
Many businesses find it difficult to get customers to buy again without upselling or cross-selling other products and services.
If your customer support agents are trying to sell or cross-sell products and have a sales target, they are not support agents.
They don’t focus on solving customer problems or providing the best possible answer, but instead they sell more products and services.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many benefits to having support agents who help upsell products. It’s important to give the right incentives. They should be focused on delivering value, not just selling products.
Imagine that you sell vacuum cleaners. Your customer calls your hotline to report that their vacuum cleaner is broken. Instead of explaining to the customer how they can return their money or exchange it, agents suggest that they purchase a new vacuum cleaner. It doesn’t work that way, let’s just say.
Instead of trying to get customers to spend more, agents should first solve a customer’s problem, be helpful, then act in the client’s best interest.
Only after they have completed this task can they attempt to sell more.
- Timing is wrong
Chatbots and email marketing have been a key channel to communicate with customers.
These channels are available to everyone, but brands have begun to use them too often. Look at the newsletters that you receive each day and take a look at what’s in your inbox.
It’s often called “spam”, but most people don’t like it. Brands claim that clients can benefit from regular communication — they can find out about new discounts, arrivals, and special offers.
This makes sense. However, most companies don’t follow common sense when they send out newsletters every day. What should the frequency of communication be?
There is no one right answer. Every brand will get a different answer. Because your users are unique, you need to choose the frequency that will connect with them based on data.
You can also use studies such as the ones below to help you experiment with your email frequency.
- Social media is a great way to ignore customer inquiries
Social media is often used by customers to contact brands. They complain about the product they purchased or share an issue with it.
They find a post you’ve recently shared on Facebook. They then write a complaint in the comments.
Software companies often deal with many such comments (just as this example below).
It happens, so why is it happening? It could be that their customer service agents aren’t responsive enough via chat or phone. This is when social media can be used to help your customer get your attention.
However, you don’t want social networking to be used to discredit your company. This is what you can do: respond with patience to any comments and show respect.
First, you need to explain the situation and offer a solution. Do not prove you are right, even if you think you might be. It will drive customers insane and cause them to post negative comments on social media.
- It is easy to forget about personalization
Automation has made it possible for companies to use SaaS tools to save time and automate tedious tasks. Consider email marketing, for example. You would send one mass email to all of your subscribers. What’s the point?
Most likely, there is only one message that will be heard by a small percentage of people. Others will mistakenly believe you sent it.
This is why brands forget to personalize emails when they launch email campaigns. It’s easy to send the same message to everyone, but segmenting lists is more difficult. Segmentation is just as important as message personalization.
Your lists can be segmented based on many criteria, including customer demographics, gender, purchasing history, preferences, etc. You can send different messages to each segment of your email list — the message that is most appropriate for them.
Personalization is your key to success. Smart personalization allows you to create more engaging messages. You only need to find an email marketing service that allows you to personalize based upon many criteria. Then, be creative with how you use them in your copy.
- Ignoring customer feedback
Collecting customer feedback helps improve your customer engagement strategy.
Your customers will be more inclined to give you their opinion if they feel valued. This is not about attention or appreciation.
Another positive outcome of collecting customer feedback is product improvement. Listening to your customers is a great way to find out what they think of the products and what improvements are needed.
You have many options for gathering feedback. Take NPS score, as an example. The survey asks customers how satisfied they are with your products. It ranges from 0-10. In the next step, many brands ask open-ended questions.
These questions can be asked:
- What are you most impressed by our products? (See the example below).
- Do you believe there could be a better way?
- What problems do you face that your product can solve?
- Do not share your knowledge
Customers can always count on you to help them, even after they’ve purchased your product. There are many benefits to sharing knowledge, expertise, or showing other products in action.
Customers will appreciate the value you offer and will be able to recall your brand. Your customers will return to you or use your services more often next time they need your products.
They will be more likely to purchase your products if you inspire them. You can then sell more of your products, upsell them, or cross-sell them.
They will also share helpful materials (videos and posts or images) with their friends. This will increase brand recognition.
Although sharing your expertise has many benefits, some believe you should only share helpful tips if you get paid. You will most likely not succeed with customer engagement strategies if you follow their advice. Free content can be a powerful tool for engaging people.
- Do not invest in loyalty programs
Gamification is introduced through loyalty programs — it’s what makes it so appealing for customers. How does it work?
Imagine that you go to a coffee shop, and you receive one stamp for the first coffee you buy.
You get one free coffee when you order ten coffees. Which coffee shop do you prefer? The one that offers stamps, or the one without stamps?
You’d prefer to stick with the coffee shop that offers one cup of coffee free, as all coffee shops offer the same coffee.
The same mechanism applies to other loyalty programs: you get an incentive and a reward for spending more. Your dopamine levels increase — boom!
You should be able to explain the benefits and terms of a loyalty program if you are going to create one. It is not enough to create a landing page hoping that clients find it online.
Wrapping up
Engagement is essential for better retention. Customers who are engaged with your brand will spend more and stay with you longer.
The right customer engagement strategy can help. There are many mistakes when introducing customer engagement strategy. This article will help you avoid many of these mistakes.
Scoop.it Blog: 7 Major Mistakes to Avoid in Customer Engagement Strategy
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