The markets are rapidly changing and we are entering into a highly customer-centric world. Similarly in Dubai and all around the UAE businesses have transitioned from sales or business oriented to customer-oriented business models. This orientation was inevitable, as the market is changing, the customer demands are increasing and here in UAE the customers are more aware and powerful. The UAE is a financial hub for the region, there are many businesses who are operating in UAE there are countless multination enterprises who are not only managing UAE operations but the entire middle-east and Africa operations from UAE. This is what makes the market more competitive and this is also the reason the customers are so strong as they have a lot many choices available to them all the time, if you failed to please them they can find hundreds of other vendors or service provider who will offer them what they want. This is what makes customer engagement, customer experience, communication and customer satisfaction the most important factors of a modern day success strategy.
Businesses usually focus on improving their customer service centers, their internal and external processes and emphasize on their products/services. However, the customer engagement is mostly overlooked which is due to the lack of awareness about it. The customer engagement is a very strong factor in converting prospects into customers and retaining them. The customer engagement have huge impact on sales and customer retention. Every business knows that the sale is just one part, the second part is to retain your customers, make them loyal and have repeated business. Many businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE have significantly boost their sales by adopting modern customer engagement practices. According to several studies businesses increased customer engagement can witness an increase of up to 85% in direct sales, furthermore it also help increasing upselling and cross-sell incomes. In this blog we will discuss what customer engagement is and how businesses can increase their customer engagement which will result in significant boost in their sales and conversions.
What is Customer Engagement and Why it is so Important?
Traditionally the term customer engagement means the relationship between the customers and a business. However, the more modernized definition of customer engagement includes the entire customer lifecycle form acquiring customer to onboarding, providing them services, nurturing your relationship with them, gathering their feedback, gaining their trust, ensuring their happiness and converting them into loyal customers. So the customer engagement means the complete process of communication, customer interaction and experience, customer loyalty and customer retention, etc. The customer engagement plays an important role in generating revenue, retaining customers and customer loyalty. These factors form the foundation of success and enable businesses to achieve for their long-term goals and objectives. Well-established businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE use customer engagement metrics as high-value indicators of their business development, sales and profitability, and the overall success. This is what makes customer engagement so important.
What is Customer Engagement Strategy?
The customer engagement strategy can be narrow down to two important factors, the customer needs and their interests. The customer engagement is often confused with customer satisfaction and customer experience, although these three are inter-connected and inter-dependent however, they all are distinct phenomenon and should be treated separately. The customer engagement strategy is basically how the customers will interact with your business and brand and the core objectives of customer engagement strategy is to offer value to the customers, solve their problems, address their concerns, and encourage them to interact with your business more. The customer experience is how the customer perceive your brand based on their interaction and the customer satisfaction is how happy or unhappy they are with that experience or interaction. That is why the customer engagement strategy have profound impact on customer experience and customer satisfaction as well which makes it a crucial component of your overall business strategy. The customer engagement strategy is also formed like any other strategy you need to consider key factors and then set goals, make a plan, assign resources and take appropriate actions to achieve those strategic goals and objectives.
How to Build a Successful Customer Engagement Strategy to Boost Sales?
The customer engagement strategy is not as that complicated as it may sound. It is a simple process which starts with a little bit of research and need basic expertise to form a plan of action. Here are the key steps to consider while setting up your next customer engagement strategy:
- Start with research work, discuss with stakeholders, analyze business intelligence& feedback data
- Identify and segment your ideal customer groups, this is crucial as your top-priority customer group will be your high-value target audience and will dictate the course of the rest of the path
- Build a brand voice and create valuable content that aligns with your targeted audience groups
- Enhance customer interaction and offer them personalized experience
- Streamline your customer engagement process by utilizing specialized tools such as CRM
- Build a loyalty program that offers value and exclusive offers for loyal customers
- Integrate and align customer feedback management process with customer engagement strategy
- Leverage the potential of social media, modern digital channels and other technologies
- Implement customer success center technologies and self-service solutions
- Evaluate the success of your customer engagement strategy after a pre-set time and make improvements to boost the impact and outcome for the next cycle
Setting up customer engagement strategy is very important it will help you increase the success rate and it will provide your teams a guideline to follow which is also very helpful for improving the performance. While setting up a customer engagement strategy it is also important to define the success metrics and monitor them throughout the process. Usually business revise their customer engagement strategies after an year or so but in such a dynamic and fast-paced markets like UAE it is important to evaluate your strategy twice an year or quarterly.
Key Customer Engagement Strategies to Increase Customer Engagements and Boost Sales?
Now that we have already discussed what customer engagement is, why it is so important, what customer engagement strategy is and how to set up a successful customer engagement strategy, let us discuss the market proven and most commonly used customer engagement strategies to increase your customer engagements which will definitely help you boosting your sales and conversions.
Utilize Multiple Channels to Increase Customer Engagements and Boost Sales
The customer engagement heavily rely on frequent communication. Today we have multiple communication channels. Especially with the rise of mobile phones, social media platforms and online platforms it is extremely important that your reach out to your customers in a way which is most convenient for them. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the internet penetration is 99%, which is far more than any other nation in the region. And the same is true for the smartphone usage as well. This means that people have access to internet and they also use smartphone. In fact the smartphones usage has significantly increased all around the world. In fact the smartphone usage has exceed the regular laptop and desktop computers. Here in UAE people on an average spend almost 8 to 9 hours daily on the internet for work and personal needs. Out of that time 3 to 4 hours are only for social media and communication. Which makes digital communication far more significant than ever before. That is why identifying the popular social media and digital platforms that are used by your target audience is crucial and you should have a strong presence on all those channels and platforms.
Each social media channel is slightly different from the other. This means each social media users’ demographics could be different too. For example, the Snapchat is more popular among youngsters and Gen Z the LinkedIn is more popular among professionals and so on. You have to identify which social media or digital communication channel is more popular among your targeted audience and then focus on them to maximize the customer engagement. When you reach out to your customers through their preferred medium they feel more connected with your brand. Integrating multiple channels in your communication and marketing process is a great customer engagement strategy. It not only help you streamline your communication but it is also very helpful in generating more leads and sales. If you keep reaching out to your customers through their most used platforms and channels they will never forget about your brand. This will also help you nurturing your relationship and establishing a strong bond between you and your customers.
Personalize Content and Experience will Increase Engagement and Boost Sales
Personalized content/communication and personalized customer experience are the two most important factors in customer engagement. When you personalize your content/communication and customer experience you treat every customer as an individual this is what have profound impact on every customer, whether they notice it or not but when you are treated as an individual your subconscious mind perceive a very positive image about the business or brand. It make them feel like you are talking to them or you have prepared your systems and processes to exclusively serve them, this sense of exclusivity is great for a satisfactory experience and it also help gaining customers’ loyalty. Furthermore the personalized communication help businesses build a persona or a personality which is much easier to interact and engage with. The brand persona can also help businesses gain a great competitive advantage and help them build a unique brand identity. The existing customer data can be a great source of information to utilize in building personalize experience and content/communication. Personalized customer experience and content is great way to increase customer engagements and boost sales.
Offering Self-Service Solutions can Increase Engagements and Boost Sales
Several worldwide studies and market analysts have suggested that almost 70% of the customers try to solve a problem by themselves before contacting the service rep or support team. It is important to understand that a majority of people who will be coming to your business would not be seeking specifically your product or service but in fact they are seeking a solution to their problem. Whether you are a B2B or B2C business your customers will be seeking a product or service that can offer them a solution to the problem they are facing. Similarly when the customers need to contact a business they first try to solve the problem by themselves rather going through the process of filing a complaint, claiming warrantee anything like that. That is why the self-service solutions have gained huge momentum over the last decade. Whether it is your corporate website providing useful information, your blogs offering guides and tutorials, your FAQs or user manuals, social e media pages, self-service kiosks, customer portals or anything, the customers will appreciate utilizing a self-service channel to solve their problem. This will significantly increase their engagements and help you gaining more sales and conversions.
Attractive Loyalty Programs Increase Customer Engagements and Boost Sales
The loyalty programs are a great gifts which keep on giving back to your customers. It is not just to please them and make them come again and again and do repeated business but it is to give them value, importance and establish a bond between the business and the customers. The loyalty programs are a great tool to inspire the prospects who haven’t yet done any business with your brand. The loyalty programs build credibility and trust among the customers which also attract more customers. The loyalty program also indicates that you value each interaction with your customers and they will always get a small little treat whenever they will do business with you. The loyalty programs can be designed as per your best interests, for example the point base loyalty program is the most common in Dubai and all around the UAE however, you can also offer benefits on other important things such as leaving appositive feedback online or in Google will give your customers a discount voucher, you can issue your customers loyalty coupons which they can share with others to support increase your referrals, etc. No matter what you offer to your customers or how you offer to them having a loyalty program is always helpful in increasing customer engagement and boosting your sales.
Implementing Closed-Loop Customer Feedback Increase Engagements and Boost Sales
Every business knows the importance of the customer feedback. Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are proactively collecting customer feedback and business intelligence data as this data is extremely vital for understanding customers, markets and your internal and external processes. The customer feedback data help businesses identify the areas of improvements and help them in the product development process. It also help businesses in aligning their products/services, processes, resources, and communication as per customers’ needs and interests. That is why gathering the customer feedback is so important. However, most of the businesses overlooked the fact that gathering customer feedback data, analyzing it and then taking action on it is just one part, the other most important part is to follow up with the customers and letting them know that their feedback was taken very seriously and appropriate actions were taken. Obviously the customer feedback has different kinds, sometimes it is just an NPS score, sometimes it is suggestions or complaints and sometimes you are surveying for product development. Whatever the case is a closed-loop feedback campaign is many time more engaging than an open-loop feedback campaign and it significantly increase customer engagement and help boosting the sales.
Brand Awareness and Email Campaigns Increase Customer Engagements and Boost Sales
The brand awareness campaign is extremely important for any business. If your targeted audience group is not aware of what you are offering then how they would be able to buy it? That is why businesses regularly and more frequently launch brand awareness campaigns. Similarly the email is also a great communication and marketing tool. According to several studies all around the world the email which is among the earliest digital communication channel is still one of the most beneficial marketing channel for businesses with having the highest ROI rate comparing to any other digital marketing channel as of this day. On top of that the digital marketing have already dominated the marketing industry. As I mentioned earlier that the mobile phone usage and internet penetration in UAE is higher than any other country in the region and people tend to spend hours on the internet on daily bases for both work and personal needs. It means that the digital marketing have very high potential in Dubai and all around the world. Both the brand awareness and email can significantly boost the customer engagement and can produce great number of sales for a business. However, the important thing to understand is that both your social media ads, posts, videos, PPCs or emails should be used to remember your customers about your business and not to bother them. Businesses who failed to gain the full benefits of their digital brand awareness and email campaigns either overdo it or either doesn’t pay much attentions. A balanced brand awareness and email campaign can significantly increase customer engagement and boost your sales.
Evaluate and Improve Customer Engagement Strategy
Businesses usually utilize multiple customer engagement strategies and use a blend of multiple strategies which suits fit to help them achieving their business goals. Obviously any strategic decision is driven by a goal and objective in mind. And for customer engagement the prime objective is growth, furthermore the goals of your customer engagement strategy are also influenced by your high-level organizational goals and objectives. Traditionally the customer engagement is used to boost sales by achieving several other goals such as improving your brand image and brand perception, increasing your customer retention and attaining higher customer loyalty. The customer loyalty and customer retention can be taken as the foundation for growth and progress. Without a loyal customer base a business can hardly operate. Think of a bucket and water analogy, your customers are the water in the bucket, and your goal is to full the bucket. If your bucket had a hole at the bottom you will never be able to fill it, unless you start pouring more water in it. As soon as you will stop pouring more water you will start losing the level in the bucket. If you don’t have loyal customers you will have to invest more in marketing, brand awareness, and brand image building campaigns which will squeeze your profitability. That is why it is important to evaluate your customer engagement campaign against the goals you set at the beginning. This can be done by collecting data and analyzing outcome, such as increase in sales, customer feedback, revenue and much more. This will help you identifying the loopholes in your campaign which you can rectify and make your campaign more effective over the time.
Conclusion
Over the time the markets have become more customer-centric, now a days’ if a business failed to satisfy its customers they will immediately lose them to the competition. Especially in Dubai and all around the UAE where the markets are growing at a rapid speed, the competition is very high and increasing steadily and the customer demands are skyrocketed. A business who needs to survive and grow must have to obey the unspoken market rules. The customer is a king now, a business should be able to fulfill their needs, desires and expectations. This is when the customer engagement can be a great tool for a business, no matter what industry you operates in or whether you are a B2B or a B2C business, you should develop a highly customer-centric strategy in order to be able to survive and grow in the market. The customer engagement is often confused with customer satisfaction and customer experience which is why most of the businesses failed to invest adequate amount or time, resources and efforts in it. That is why in this blog we have discussed what customer engagement is, why it is important, how different and interconnected it is with other business strategies and how a business should develop its customer engagement strategy.
We have also listed a few highly popular and effective customer engagement strategies. If you want to learn more about customer engagement of if you have any query or if you want us to help you building and executing your customer engagement strategy, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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