The key to great customer engagement is to learn more about what your customers think of you. In turn, you’ll be able to offer more of what they want. Once they have built a stronger connection with you, they begin to share their experiences with others.
The Customer Experience
Customer engagement strategies encourage customers to become more interactive with your business. But, before you press forward with implementing those strategies, you’ll need to make sure their experience with your store is excellent.
People will often forgive honest mistakes, so don’t fret about giving them the perfect experience. Just make sure that you hold yourself accountable and remedy those mistakes in a timely manner.
Recruiting Customers
Your engagement efforts rely on customer feedback. You need to know what your customers are looking for, then you can bring them what they want. Otherwise you’re flying blind and sending out offers or discounts to people who won’t take advantage of them.
Simple surveys are a great way to recruit customers. Plus, you’ll start learning more about their needs and expectations. Over time, all of this will build a rapport that strengthens your relationship with them, which helps you grow your business.
5 Tips for a Stronger Connection
Building stronger connections begins with meeting their expectations. What are they looking for? How do they feel about your brand? And many other questions that need to be answered prior to engaging with them on a level that will truly connect with them. The following five customer engagement ideas will guide you through gathering more information to answer those questions and how you can implement their requests.
1. Encourage Customers to Participate in Online Reviews
Online reviews are an easy way to attract potential customers. On average, there are more positives ratings posted than bad ones, so don’t let that deter you from encouraging customers to write an online review. And don’t forget to share those glowing reviews once you get them. It’s important for as many people to see them as possible.
The easiest way to request online reviews is through a text message. In your message, ask them where they would like to review your business (e.g. “Text ‘1’ for Google, ‘2’ for Facebook, ‘3’ for Yelp) and when they reply, automatically send them the direct link to the appropriate website. Not sure how? Try this.
2. Use Simple Polls to Understand the Customer’s Experience
After each purchase, a short poll (one or two questions long) can quickly discover problems with their experience. These polls appear less intrusive and tend to generate more responses. With the right customer engagement tools, you can quickly text a poll to your customers and get their feedback almost immediately.
3. Surveys to Learn More About Your Customers
Want to know a little more about their experience? Then surveys are the best way to go. You can give in-depth questions to ask for more information. Response rates will increase if customers are given a good incentive. As with online review requests and polls, it’s easy to send surveys in a text message.
4. Listen to Your Customers
Now that you’ve gathered all of this great information, you need to listen to what your customers are saying. The best responses to any survey are the emotional ones—both good and bad. You should also look for patterns in their responses.
5. Use Customer Feedback to Make Personalized Experiences
Customers often feel jilted when businesses ask for feedback yet do nothing with it. It feels like you wasted their time. Plus, it reinforces their thoughts about their negative experiences. When you implement strategies to meet their feedback, you create personalized experiences that will keep them coming back again and again.
Building Relationships
It’s important to understand your customers’ expectations. They want to be heard and see their feedback put into motion. So, remember that it takes time and patience to implement an engagement strategy that truly works.
Like any other relationship in our lives, the one with your customers begins with trust. Once you have gained their trust, then you’ve recruited an advocate for your business. This type of connection creates loyalty and a stronger customer base.