Customer Engagement File
Guidelines For Assessing Whether Customer Service Is “Good” For Your Company
by Robert Bacal
If you’ve read Parts One, Two And Three of this series, you should now realize that trying to increase customer engagement is just as likely to damage your income as increase sales. That’s because engagement needs to be the “right” kind, and it needs to fit your particular business, and the needs of your customers
Below are some principles and guidelines to take into account
- The more your paying customers want a fun experience, the more important customer engagement becomes. That’s why engagement at certain entertainment venues (theme parks) is critical, but not at others (movie theatres).
- The more your customers want a fast in and out, get it done process and value speed and convenience the less useful trying to increase engagement will be.
- Businesses that require customers to wait in line, or wait for things like repairs, can use tactics to increase customer engagement as a way to counter-act the boredom of waiting. However, this doesn’t get a the root cause issue, which is that customers have to wait. Yes, entertain them as they wait, but better to reduce waiting times and convenience.
- Increased customer engagement through things like gamification can bring the wrong types of customers — typically non-paying customers into your business. When that increased traffic and “stay length” interferes with paying customers getting their business done, you can actually damage sales.
- Anything that detracts or distracts from the purchasing process is likely to cost you money, and that applies to customer engagement, except for very small entertainment oriented niches.
- There is no substitute for understanding what your customers want. Your business is unique. If you serve customers who want to engage and chat, then engaging and chatting is a good thing. If not, then it simply becomes annoying. For example, the elderly often prefer slower but friendlier service and may want to be engaged more than younger people.
- Don’t confuse activity with effectiveness. Just because customers are engaged in “something” doesn’t mean that that something has business value. It might, it might not.
Final Part: Case Study: Websites And Customer Engagement – Pulling It All Together
