One of the most persistent myths surrounding customer engagement is that to do it properly and generate results, one should be prepared to spend a lot of money. This myth is dangerous, not only because it deters a lot of companies from engaging with their customers, but it also strips away the whole process of customer engagement from one of its most essential aspects: creativity!
Luckily for you, the reality couldn’t be farther from this myth! Of course there are a lot of customer engagement tools and strategies out there that are designed to cater to the needs of profitable companies, although that doesn’t mean that a smaller or medium-sized business or brand cannot find ways to boost their levels of engagement while maintaining a low cost.
If you start your customer engagement efforts with a clear objective, there are lots of ways and methods to be creative and get your customers to interact with you and provide you with valuable feedback.
Let’s have a look at 5 simple cost-effective methods that can help you engage your audience in a meaningful way!
1. Interact with your social media followers!
We assume that you are already using social media to promote your brand and your products. Aside from scrolling, you know what else people love to do on social? They like to talk, share their experiences with your products and ask questions! Ignoring them is, simply put, a customer engagement sin. Monitor and answer their comments and DMs, use posts as a means to ask them how they feel about your company and manage complaints in a timely fashion. 33% of customers that participated in a survey conducted by Statista claimed that they don’t expect any response at all on the complaints they post on brands’ social media accounts. Imagine their surprise when you get to be the one that proves them wrong and start having conversations with your fans and followers.
2. Make a memorable first impression!
Good reviews can make your day, but they can also be used to make people more eager to engage with you! Use them as testimonials on your homepage or share them in the form of social media posts. There is no need to be coy when it comes to the kind words that customers have for your brand. Not only they serve as an encouragement for others to do the same and share their positive experiences, it also creates a first impression that makes new customers feel at ease and recognize you as a brand that listens to its audience.
3. Robots are cool, but you shouldn’t talk like them!
Take a minute to assess your brand’s overall tone of voice… How do you think your customer feels when reading your content or talking to you? Does he/she feel that there is a human behind the words or a robot? Sure, robots are cool, but they don’t excel at customer engagement (yet!). Customers love brands that interact with them using a friendly, human voice and don’t appreciate autoresponses, bland thank you pages and generic survey questions. A few tweaks that make your voice more humane can go a long way to boosting your engagement!
4. Personalize your communication, not just for personalization’s sake!
Before you protest that personalization is time-comsumming and costly, let us clarify one thing: personalization is not just a customer experience buzzword that brands need to spend a ton of money on in order to get results. Personalization is a process that comes naturally when you truly know your customers. So before you start implementing it, ask yourself if you are sure what your customers want to hear from you in order to feel unique and valuable. If you don’t feel so confident, take a step back, use the data at your disposal or focus your energy and budget on generating feedback. If you do that, then personalization will not only be more targeted and successful, it will also prove to be more cost-effective than you initially had in mind.
5. Ask the right questions at the right time!
Running surveys is a great way to engage with your website’s visitors and your customers! However, the level of their engagement depends on you recognizing when, where and what to ask them. People who browse a website don’t want their experience to be disturbed by a huge pop-up window and check-out questionnaires shouldn’t look like they will take a lot of their precious time. Put yourself in their shoes and rethink your approach. Be timely and friendly and soon you will see that people will be more willing to share their feedback.
Creativity, authenticity and out-of-the-box thinking… These are your weapons when it comes to enhancing your customer engagement. And a tool that collects customer feedback across all stages of your buyer’s journey will sure come in handy! e-satisfaction.com offers you a variety of features that help you meaningfully engage with your customers, get inside their minds and take actions that will grow your revenue!
