10 Top Tips for Better Customer Engagement

There are all manner of relatively tiny changes which can significantly ramp up your Customer Engagement success, but strangely relatively few companies do all of the following:

 

 

Personality & Humanity

Use staff avatars / profile pics throughout your site - on blog posts, on staff listing pages, and as key contacts. People relate best to other people - they like to know who they’re dealing with, and that there is a real person at the other end to handle whatever matters arise.

 

 

Interactivity

Give your actual and potential customers a platform for getting in touch with you, in fact the more different ways the merrier! Email, Forms, Comments, and Pop-up Chat.
People have different preferences for getting in touch, I personally quite like email or pop-up chat. Everyone is slightly different, some like to log an issue and pick up on it later, so pop-up chat is not alwyas a suitable option - you need to offer choice.

 

 

Responsibility and Accountability

There are so many sites out there lacking featured personnel on-site - no key staff listing and no customer contacts. In order to give customers peace of mind, and make them feel that they are likely to be looked after properly, list out key department heads with contact forms / contact emails (can be generic) attached it makes so much difference to perceived levels of service.

 

 

Official Pictured Customer Service Officer with Contact Page

It’s incredible how few sites have an Official Customer Service Officer. I first saw this the Swedish Eon power site (currently no longer active) and it made a huge impression on me. Companies are becoming more and more distant from consumers, and you need to feel you have someone on your side representing your best interests, this is such a big win for most companies, yet near enough no one seems to do it!

 

 

Transparency

This is simply to justify rationally and properly what you communicate - offer references and examples for instance, and be clear and unequivocal about what you state. There is far too much out there which is simply insubstantial or unsubstantiated, or even outright obtuse!. The customer needs to be able to easily pick up an accurate representation of what you are all about and who is behind the screen.

 

 

Useful Content

This in part reinforces what we state under ’Transparency’, but means also offering proper collateral and contextual references, so that potential customers don’t just have to take your word for it. It means offering content on plain listed features, as well as tips and usage cases / serving suggestions / live and practical examples.

 

 

Varied Depth of Content

All your different customers are not at the same level - you have potential customers who need a broad overview with no depth, new customers who need some more detail, and regular longer-term customer who want the minutest details and references. You need content for each of those core audience groups and more.

 

 

Personalisation

Give your customers a space where they can personalise their experience of you - select specific preferences, organize, bookmark and save relevant information - with notes even. Where appropriate, offer a facility to compare and contrast different service levels or offerings via checklists and other cross-tabulated means.

 

 

Get Social

Whoever your customers are, chances are they spend a lot more time on social sites and communities than on yours. You need an outreach programme to connect with your customers outside your immediate domain (website etc.) and the perfect vehicle is to capture them where they are otherwise active - on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest etc.

 

 

Host your own Professional Community

There’s nothing professionals like more than to network with their peers, compare notes, seek advice, angle for employment and otherwise engage a community of like-minded individuals to float some ideas by or at least tap into a collected mind-share which can inform and add value to their chosen profession / specialism.