The customer is the king.
No matter which century we live in, this phrase will always hold importance. With so many strategies and solutions available today, it might be easy to attract customers initially. But retaining them for years is quite a challenging task.
That’s why businesses are putting so much effort into engaging customers. But customer engagement is not about driving a sale alone. It’s about keeping your customers engaged and offering meaningful communications.
However, more than 80% of customers expect immediate engagement from a company when it comes to customer engagement. This is why real-time customer engagement strategies are getting so much applause in the business world.
But what is it all about, and what do you need to drive repeat business? Let’s find out below!
Real-time Customer Engagement – Decoding The Facts
The idea behind real-time customer engagement is about understanding customers’ needs and interacting with them with the same speed or cadence that matters to the customers. Many business owners and marketing specialists often misunderstand it to be social newsjacking or real-time PR.
Contrary to that, it’s about creating relatable interactions that assist in fostering a connection with a brand. So, if you consider all the aspects of the buyer’s journey like device preferences, location, and time, it will help brands decipher the intent and react responsibly.
Remember, consumer preferences are changing, and their speed of buying decisions are increasing as well. So, if you don’t provide contextually relevant interactions at the same rate, they will quickly switch to a competitor.
Hence, you need to master three core capabilities:
- Speed and Agility: Real-time is all about interacting at the right moment of engagement. That way, it would seem non-intrusive and will deliver value. This might require your interacting with customers within milliseconds after their response. However, it usually depends on your industry and business goals.
- Data-driven personalization: Customer engagement of any form is about data. So, whenever you think about using a customer engagement platform, it must bring together online and offline behavior to deliver unique, compelling, and relevant experiences. Remember, you must think beyond name and address and focus on weather, date, time, and other elements.
- Omnichannel Optimization: Remember, customers won’t interact with your brand only through a single channel. It could be anything from inbound, outbound, digital, to traditional means. So, you need to orchestrate relevant interactions across all the touchpoints.
Final Takeaways
Today, businesses have access to several automated tools to determine audiences, segments, and individuals who are most likely to respond. So, if you have such data available, use it in your favor by drafting meaningful and contextually relevant messages, regardless of the engagement platform.
That’s the only way that you can close the gap between customer experiences and expectations. Remember, customers are 7.2 times more likely to purchase if you send appropriate messages at the right time. And if you consider revenue goals, more than 50% of brands that excelled in the engagement strategy exceeded revenue. So, it would be great if you start using trending customer engagement solutions to build brand loyalty and eventually sales and ROI.
