1. Tune In
The customer experience is ever evolving and so are customer expectations. To prepare themselves for this, social businesses need to be more responsive and able to react “in the moment” on all channels where customers are communicating.
2. Educate Yourself on the New Customer Relationship
The customer relationship doesn’t end at the sale — or begin there, either — and neither does customer engagement. With so many ways for the customer to make contact, social businesses need to understand that everyone is in customer service, not just one department or a frontline team. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to add value to the customer relationship.
So how can you build these valuable relationships?
Beyond establishing a great rapport via social media, it’s also a good idea to grow a relationship based on how customers use your product or service. For instance, conduct this simple but effective poll: What are the top five questions your customers ask service and support about your product or service?
Understanding your customers’ needs will take the relationship from reactive to proactive. This comes in especially handy during service renewals, when the customer is identified as a candidate for an upsell, or when you ask for referrals. Customers whose lives are made easier by your brand are more likely to become evangelists.
3. Know When the Moment Is Right: Anticipate Needs
It’s important to engage your customers with the right message or action at the right time — and maintain this practice throughout the customer lifecycle. In order to do that, you need visibility into their interactions with you, you need to understand what they require, and then engage accordingly.
Try these quick reads to get that visibility:
- 9 customer engagement plays
- 5 ways to level up customer loyalty
There are many ways to be in tune with your customers; understanding behaviors and anticipating needs are great ways to build up customer good will. What other initiatives are you doing to grow your existing customer relationships?
Ellis Luk is the Marketing Manager at Totango, the leading customer engagement management platform that helps online businesses create and build active user bases by combining big data analytics with powerful segmentation and engagement tools to allow online services to take the right actions with each customer, in real time.
