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The hardest part isn’t securing a customer but retaining them after a transactional exchange. To create loyal customers, you’ll need to keep them engaged with your brand long after their initial purchase.
Today’s consumers are first and foremost digital customers. They rely on various digital channels to navigate and communicate with brands. Therefore, brands must seamlessly engage customers across various digital devices to fill the gaps in the customer’s journey.
Customers no longer just want to make a purchase decision; they want exceptional, informative, and memorable customer experiences (CX). When businesses make a goal of enhancing digital customer engagements, they’re interested in providing customers with something meaningful—something that goes beyond a great product.
Consumers want to be treated as individuals. They demand a personalized experience and expect brands to know their preferences and purchase history. To meet those expectations, businesses need to leverage data yielded from customer interactions across multiple touchpoints. They can generate actionable insights to inform engagement strategies and improve CX that way.
Whether it’s exceptional end-to-end CX, real-time customer support, or valuable content, when done well, a great multi-channel engagement strategy delivers. It can improve customer relationships, build brand awareness, and bring you closer to your business goals.
Word of mouth is a company’s best friend
5-star customer service examples are a company’s best channel for acquiring new customers. When customers are so pleased with their customer service experience, they’ll recommend the company to their friends. It’s important to know how reviews and recommendations are going to help you when you open a business. Eventually, these references which are created from good customer service skills, not products, will turn into new business. They’ll also strengthen the credibility of the brand.
A Success story
There likely aren’t a lot of customer service manuals out there with instructions on what to do when a bear wanders into a store. Fortunately, a quick-thinking employee at Crazy Bruce’s Discount Liquor was able to avert a potential disaster. When the automatic outside pink color doors opened and a bear walked it, the employee swiftly moved to lock the inside door to prevent the bear from entering. It was a good thing that he stayed alert, because moments later, a customer walked into the vestibule where the bear was. Fortunately, the employee was able unlock the door and let the customer into the store before things went horribly wrong. It is a great (and unique) reminder of the role that awareness plays in customer service.
3 important qualities of customer service
As we look at various examples of good customer service across different companies and industries, you’ll notice that they all share 3 important qualities of customer service. They are:
- Professionalism: This means that customer support reps, agents, and retail staff display a positive and professional attitude to everyone they interact with. You can also make sure your staff is wearing decent clothes like jackets, suits & pants to enhance their look and feel.
- Patience: Every customer is different. Great customer service requires patience, understanding, and flexibility to deal with varying situations.
- People-focused: Good customer service is centered around connection and building a great relationship with your customer.
Provide customers with self-service options
Customers are increasingly demanding options for self-service during any experience with a brand. These options include different tools and services, including:
- Artificial intelligence chatbots that can answer various questions and direct customers to a human agent when necessary.
- A knowledge base of FAQs and articles that customers can easily refer to when they encounter problems or have questions.
- A library of multimedia resources that customers can use as a reference when needed.
Providing self-service solutions for your customers empowers them to find their own answers and resolutions and improves digital customer experiences, thus driving future brand engagement by building trust.
Conclusion
Delivering customized customer experiences requires businesses to adopt a customer-centric business model to develop personal, lasting connections with customers.
The future of customer engagement is sure to be even more dynamic and exciting than it is now, which is why businesses must stay on top of trends and technological innovations.
Remember that empowering your CX teams with the best tools will allow them to form meaningful connections with customers. Adding a human touch to your engagement strategies will enable you to achieve that ultimate goal: to keep customers loyal and satisfied.
