Customer engagement is something a little like beauty. It is easy to see when something or someone has it. But it isn’t easy to quantify and describe.
This is business, and Customer Engagement is a key business driver, so we will. It can be described as a relationship between a company and its customers beyond the sale transaction.
It is an emotional connection where the Customer shows a genuine concern to see the company succeed and is willing to help in that effort. It’s not customer satisfaction.
If a customer is happy, then your company has done its job. But you don’t know anything more. It was what was promised and who did it. However, who built no relationship. It’s not Customer Delight.
Your company has provided more value than expected, exceeding your expectations with ‘Delight’. Although ‘Engagement is not the full meaning of ‘Delight’, it can be considered a contributing factor.
It’s not even customer loyalty. Recurring purchase patterns are a common way to measure loyalty. The relationship element may be lacking or poorly developed.
Customer engagement is not a simple blend of several aspects of the emotional connection between the Customer and company members.
People want their voices heard and can react negatively to being silenced. Just think of the 60’s TV series ‘The Prisoner’ with its cry “, I am not just a number, but a free man!” The CRM (Customer Records Management System) is a dictatorship.
Why is Customer Engagement so important?
- Engaged customers are the ones that make it happen.
- They will recommend you to their friends and coworkers.
- They buy almost exclusively from you.
- They give feedback on your performance.
- Because they know your business, you are more affordable to service.
In summary, good customer engagement will ensure that your company has a loyal base of customers. They will be more cost-effective to serve, and they will also help you secure the future.
How do I measure customer engagement?
It has been not easy to measure customer engagement in the past. Traditional customer surveys don’t cut it. They may measure transaction feedback or attitudes to brands, but they don’t get to the core of the relationship.
Focus groups can go a long distance. However, focus groups can be costly and only cover a small number of customers.
A simple measurement is not sufficient. A single number is useless. It can show you where you are at any time and can even indicate progress or decline over time.
However, you need the information to tell you what is working well (so that you can reinforce it) and what is not (so that you can either stop doing it or improve it).
Characteristics of Customer Engagement Measurement System
You need to look for many characteristics when measuring Customer Engagement.
1. Your customer base should have a good reach. Not only do you want to hear from the great customers, but also the bad ones.
2. You should have a ‘light touch. This means it should be simple to use, not interfere with your day-to-day activities and take away from providing excellent customer service.
3. Any company or system that recognizes who must make changes from the top will succeed. Your Top Team must be able to relate to the method you choose. This will allow you to know that the results will prompt a move towards action and provide the needed resources.
4. Clear supporting analysis is essential. Complex graphs can lead to finger-pointing and ‘I reckon’ at the debrief. Clear analysis and identified actions points are key to positive change and consensus around the table.
5. This allows you to increase customer engagement. You can improve your entire engagement strategy by providing feedback to customer participants.
Staff turnover and attribution are among the most important issues for any industry you have been dealing with. And when it comes to contact centre services where the churn is notoriously high, it turns out to be a major priority. So why are so many contact centre services failing to keep their customers engaged? Below are the five major important ideas and strategies that would help keep your customers engaged.
Coaching the coaches of your call centre industry
You need first to understand and know who has been coaching the coaches.
This is a question that is asked most of the time when we work with the contact centre services as we spend a lot of time with the call centre agents, and the supervisors and front line leaders do not have formal contact centre leadership training.
The question here is what you have been doing to develop them and because they are the ones who are in turn helping them to develop agents and keep them in the call centre.
#1. Asking them for feedbacks
Due to the daily interactions with all their customers, call centre industry agents could provide feedback on the customer’s behaviour and ideas for all the best practices during service interactions.
Their feedback turns to be the most critical one. It helps improve the customer’s experience by revising their surveys, enhancing the call centre receipts, improving the call centre training methods, and modifying their products and services.
Through regular customer feedback, the agents would feel that they are a part of the team and important to a brand’s success.
#2. Set expectations before they arrive
One of the best options you could begin in the right manner is to include a mini-training package as a part of their pre-employment kit.
You could include the following things in the kit like the new hire training schedule, homework expectations, and where they need to arrive from day one.
Some of the call centre industry agents also include pre-work in their kit. Pre-work would involve the stuff written about the company, industry or the customer base.
Another best idea for pre-work here is to have them look for more information on the internet regarding the company, their products and services, and many more.
#3. Don’t ask, and don’t tell
Unfortunately, coaching has turned out to be one of those methods that many front line leaders generally use instead of making development interactive and finding out what has been driving the behaviours and how they could help the call centre agents.
#4. Empowering call centre employees with purpose
For the call centre industry agents to arrive at their best, they need to feel valued at a company and understand the brand’s value and mission.
Agents here would feel empowered and represent their opinions in meeting on how their services could be improved, along with the staff retreats and employee recognition program rewarding greater customer service.
Offering your staff some development sessions featuring coaches or motivational speeches could also turn out to be refreshing, empowering, and instilling a collective desire to work successfully as a team achieving individual success.
To conclude, through employee engagement, the call centre industry agents could boost their employees’ motivation, build up confidence in whatever work they do, and ultimately lead them with exceptional customer service for long-term customer loyalty.
So, what other strategies would you like to add to improve customer’s engagement? And how have they turned to be for your organization?
- 4 Customer Experience Tools to Look
- RCS Technology: New Age of Customer Engagement for Operators
- Ways To Attract Customers To Boost Sales and Productivity
- How To Improve Online Customer Service for Customer Satisfaction
- 6 Ways To Increase Customer Interaction With Your Business
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