10 Actionable Tips to Improve Customer Engagement

“Customer service” is no longer an isolated function for companies. These days, when customer sentiment travels at the speed of social media, it has become part of a larger, company-wide customer engagement strategy.

Thanks to social media (and much to the chagrin of marketing departments everywhere), companies can make or break their reputations depending on how well they deliver customer service and engage customers.

With that in mind, here are 10 tips you can use to improve customer engagement with your organization:

1.  Make it easy for customers to contact you on the channel they prefer the most (e.g. web, social, mobile, voice, etc.).

2.  Provide consistency across all of channels so customers have the same experience no matter how they interact with your organization.

3.  Engage with your customers at every point in the interaction so that you can build a strong long-lasting relationship.

4.  Empower your employees – all of them. A good customer experience depends on your front-line agents, so give them the power to truly serve customers. (And, in turn, make those customers ambassadors of your brand.)

5.  Turn the so-called “moments of truth” with customers into opportunities to build customer value, foster loyalty, and boost your bottom line by allowing your customers to voice their opinions, ideas and concerns.

6.  Take action on all of the customer insight that you collect. Don’t miss an opportunity to prove to your customers how important they are to you.

7.  Use all of the tools at your disposal (on every channel) to mobilize and empower and your brand advocates.

8.  Think relationship, not transaction. Ensure that your organization is focused on building  rapport with your customers and apply that approach to every potential touch-point.

9.  Collect, analyze and act on all customer feedback in real-time. Don’t wait.

10.  And finally … no matter how busy your contact center is, don’t let your customers sit on hold. Consider adding call-back functionality like Fonolo so they get a call-back when agents are free.