Customer Engagement, Kick It Up a Notch!

As of recent years, business tools (blogs, forums, wikis, CRMs, support tools, etc) have brought to light customer engagement. Organizations today are incorporating social tactics into various parts of their business, enabling engagement with their customers and stakeholders. The business model of the modern world is one where the bottom-line is not only influenced by product or service quality, but by how the business deals with overall customer life-cycle.  Every touch point, from initial marketing to sales funnel into the support and follow up initiatives, how you engage with your customers impacts the success of your organization.

What is an engaged customer?

Of course the definition of an engaged customer depends on the application and the user. For our purposes we consider an engaged customer as one who participates, in a recurring manner, with the product and/or the employees of the organization.  Engagement can happen across mediums such as organizationally managed support centers, via phone, through social media, customer loyalty programs, live events, etc.

Why do organizations care about engagement?

1. 45% of US consumers will abandon an online transaction if their questions or concerns are not addressed quickly. (Forrester)
2. It is 6-7 times more costly to attract a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer.  (White House Office of Consumer Affairs)
3. 89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing poor customer service. (RightNow Customer Experience Impact Report)
4. Consumers are 2 times more likely to share their bad customer service experiences than they are to talk about positive experiences.  (2012 Global Customer Service Barometer)
5. A customer is 4 times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service related vs. price or product related. (Bain & Co.)
6. 33% of consumers would recommend a brand that provides a quick but ineffective response. (Nielsen-McKinsey)
7. It takes 12 positive customer experiences to make up for one negative experience. (Parature)
8. 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.  (McKinsey)
9. 55% of consumers would pay more for a better customer experience. (Defaqto Research)
10. 83% of consumers require some degree of customer support while making an online purchase. (eConsultancy)
11. Customer churn is attributed to the poor quality of customer service.  (Accenture Maximizing Customer Retention Report)
12. A 10% increase in customer retention levels result in a 30% increase in the value of the company. ( Launching and maintaining an effective customer engagement strategy can be daunting and at times difficult. In a June 2014 of US CMOs, eMarketer found that aligning departmental strategies and priorities was the primary challenge. Primary Challenge of Working Across Departments to Develop and Integrated Customer Experience According to US CMOs, June 2014– Aligning department strategies and priorities – 42.8%– Integrating the customer experience across the various sales channels – 26.0%– Developing seamless messaging across different communication channels – 13.9%– Leveraging big data – 8.7%– Creating customer engagement – 8.7%Salesforce offers a variety of tools to holistically engage with your leads and customers.  At the center, the CRM solution is the lifeblood of any sales organization.  However, solutions such as the Service Cloud, the Exacttarget Marketing Cloud, and the Salesforce Community allow you to go above and beyond just selling to interacting, targeting, and learning from your customers. Strengthening the relationship you have with your customer can be just the thing you need to push your organization to the front of the pack, or maintain your position if you’re already there!