Maybe you’ve heard the terms customer engagement and customer service and thought that they may be one in the same. Well, today we’ll help you to make the distinction between the two and show you how customer engagement may be able to help your business a little bit more than customer service.
Of course before we get into the nitty gritty of our reasons why customer engagement may help your business better, let’s define both terms to help you make the distinction for both.
Let’s define Customer Service and Customer Engagement
Customer Service
There’s a widespread belief that a company is as successful as the quality of their customer service. That said, we can define customer service as the support you give your customers to satisfy and resolve their needs and wants.
Providing customer service means that you’re making it easier for your customer to have an invaluable experience and choose your product or service again. Gone are the days when consumers only focus on pricing. In this day and age, customer service is right up there with pricing and branding when it comes to a consumer’s choice.
Customer Engagement
Customer engagement has everything to do with interaction. As a business keeping the conversation going between you and your customer is very important. You can do this through inline sources such as social media, through email marketing or other online events.
The key to successfully practice customer engagement lies in the strengthening of the relationships your brand/business has with your customers. That said, customer engagement is the ongoing process of interacting with your customers in order to strengthen the relationship you have with them.
Longevity is the aim with customer engagement.
The Differences Between Customer Engagement and Customer Service
The primary difference between customer engagement and customer service is that one is proactive and the other is reactive. With this in mind let’s break it down:
- Customer service is reactive – The majority of the time customer service comes into play when a customer needs information or an issue resolved. This is the reason why we can consider customer service to be a reactive type of service.
- Customer engagement is proactive – On the other side of customer service is customer engagement. When you engage your customers you go ahead of them and initiate the interaction. On social media for example, when you make a post asking questions, putting out a poll, or putting something out there that’s funny or informative, that’s one of the many ways you engage your customers on a daily basis.
When you receive a response such as a like for the post or a comment, it confirms that you have successfully engaged with your customer.
How Can Customer Engagement Help My Business?
When you make the first move as a brand or business to initiate a conversation and listen to what your customer has to say, it speaks volumes about you and the culture of your business. When you make the first move as a brand or business to initiate a conversation and listen to what your customer has to say, incorporating a customer data platform can greatly enhance this interaction. It speaks volumes about you and the culture of your business.
Through engaging your customers, you create ambassadors for your brand without having to go over the top. When customers see and know that you truly care, the possibilities of that relationship is improved 10 times over.
In light of the fact that deliberate and strategic customer engagement proves to be invaluable for your business, here are a few ways you can step up your customer engagement game for the success of your business and the satisfaction of your customers.
Improve Your Overall Customer Experience
Customers choose one brand/business over another because of the experience. Gone are the days when pricing was the dominant reason for making their choice. On top of that, the quality of your product and your company/brand’s story also plays a huge role. When you use every opportunity you can to tell your story and show your customers how they are part of that story, it does wonders for your business. To improve an overall customer experience, consider implementing Walkme alternatives and similar solutions that deliver a positive onboarding stage.
Make Your Business and Brand More Human
Customers need something they can relate to. If your brand or business seems generic or robotic, it may cause a disconnect between you and your consumers. Move away from practices like that and incorporate as many human elements as possible.
Allow your customers to put a face to the name, be approachable on all your platforms, and use more laid-back and casual language. The more human you are in your business, the better.
Revamp Your Social Media
What’s any company or brand these days without social media? Social media is an important tool that helps your business to have a voice and to interact with both current and potential customers.
The best part is that the content creation possibilities are endless. We can also take a page from the human element book and apply it to social media for great engagement and connection with everyone. If you lack in-house capabilities, you can decide on outsourced content creation.
In Closing …
Taking a customer engagement approach to your business has lots of perks involved. And of course, if you need to expand the reach of your business, Day Translations is at your service. Check out our suite of offerings through our business services to get started today.