Does your company have a written customer engagement strategy? Does it lay out a clear action plan for welcoming new customers and ensuring that their experiences are as good as, if not better than what they expected? Does it target specific resources and pursue specific objectives so you can easily determine effectiveness?
Eighty-six percent of executives believe failure to engage customers results in lost sales, according to Economist Intelligence Unit Global Survey.
Questions to answer before you start
- What would be success for your engagement efforts?
- Hint: It’s more than sales – it’s advocacy. You want involved, loyal customers that rely exclusively on your products and services and go out of their way to recommend them to others.
- Who is your audience?
- Hint: You are talking to people, so you need to understand their needs, expectations, etc. What do they value and how can you provide it to them?
- What content would they like to know?
- Hint: Help new customers navigate your business for a better overall experience – tell them who to talk to about specific/common issues.
- What content do you want the customer to know?
- Hint: Get them engaged with new product/service development. Have a plan in place for introducing your other products/services – typically the start of the relationship is focused on their needs, now show them the possibilities.
- How to deliver the message?
- Hint: Email is NOT the only option! Sometimes you should call, or write a letter (personalized) or stop by and have a good old fashioned face-to-face meeting!
Simple ways to engage your customers
- Solicit customer opinions – regularly and in visible way.
- Hint: Do you have a customer advisory board? Do you regularly interview and survey customers? With online survey tools like Zoomerang, Key Survey and Survey Monkey, you can easily set up a simple process for surveying – and if you have a blog, there are plug-ins for polls and surveys.
- Respond quickly and honestly – and report on progress of your actions.
- Hint: It’s perfectly fine to respond with “I hear you and I don’t have an answer but this is what I am going to do…” Give a time line with milestones so you manage expectations. Then meet or exceed those expectations.
- Hint 2: Ask what an acceptable solution would be and if that isn’t possible, offer reasonable alternatives. Collaboration and consensus is important.
- Make it simple for customers to speak with you.
- Question: If I went to your website right now, could I find the name, phone number and email address for your leadership team? If not, remember to remedy that as soon as possible.
One last key point to remember
This is a commitment – not a Q3 ad campaign. It will require dedicated resources, and you will need to test, analyze results, modify and test some more. Results come over time but your business is more than quarterly results so the investment for the long haul is a wise move.
