Companies executing customer engagement strategies could retain over 80% of their customers compared to around 25% for those who have no customer engagement strategies in their top 5 agenda.
Develop a customer engagement strategy
There are 5 steps approach
- Defining your customer journey map – understand who, where they are and how they know about you
- Keep track the customer interactions – for both online and offline channels and how they react to every action you’ve taken
- Observe the behaviour and their changes over time – for both requirement and the degree of the requirement is being satisfied.
- Take feedback from time to time – regular survey to understand both customers and industry expectations
- Offer personalized service – generate uniqueness and personalized service that fit consumers’need.
An effective strategy starts with locating your ideal customer.
Target your customer
An international airline sent generic marketing emails and notifications to all their customers receives on average 3% of audience unsubscribing. They have no effective ways to profile their customers. We had a conversation with their analytics and customer service for the below 3 questions
- Do you have insight into what food and beverage your most paid customers like and dislike?
- If 1 is yes, Do you turn the insight into an service offering to passengers?
- If 2 is yes, Have you empower your service team to know these insights and thus serve the passengers accordingly?
Unfortunately, we receive no positive answer.
Design for customer, less for maintenance in a consumer-facing industry
Bad experience normally is a result of bad design instead of implementation. When an airline offers meal selection during online check-in, passengers are confused about going back and forth between web sites to reserve meals and seats. The airline found that most online check-in passengers have left the meals selection blank even for long haulage flights.
Deploy visual tools on your customer
Engage your customer and let them visualize your brand. Brands showcasing their product/ service with visualization/ infographics, simple animation, and more customer service tools, for instances on-screen guidelines, co-browsing, and virtual assistant recorded higher customer satisfaction. A passenger is getting impatient when they stuck at renewing their loyalty membership and transferring their points to the new account, both the self-service corner with the Q&A text and customer hotline cannot address their problem immediately, and lately, the customer service team sent him a 7 steps guide to address the passenger painpoint in less than 5 mins.
Know your customers
Profiling customers from omnichannel will be an advantage. Some organizations often have their customer service and sales team communicating with their customer using their private channels. Besides those “independent” conversations, multiple official interaction channels post challenges to meet customer communication preference and to generate customer insight. The airline passengers reported damage baggage in the destination and looking for airline feedback. The airline destination office was swift enough to give feedback to the customer via email, but real-time chat instead of the email is supposed to be the preference & regular channel to receive updates. The airline has lost this business class customer.
Rethink your customer engagement strategy and collaborate among the team starting from journey mapping. Aim for seamless, consistent experience and ultimately provide personalized service.
