I was reading last night about engagement. In my book “Get Bold” we defined engagement as the emotional connection with your client or employee, usually created by exceptional experiences that are integrated, interactive, and identifying.
A Social Business connects people to expertise. It connects individuals whether customers, partners, or employees as networks of people to generate new sources of innovation, foster creativity, and establish greater reach and exposure to new business opportunities. It establishes a foundational level of trust across these business networks and thus a willingness to openly share information, developing a deeper sense of loyalty among customers and employees. It empowers these networks with the collaborative, gaming, and analytical tools needed to engage each other and creatively solve business challenges.
Enagement is a great goal, but Continuous Customer Engagement is the next turn of the crank. It is about systematically interpreting and evolving a comprehensive understanding of an individual in order to engage that individual in a productive manner in any brand interaction.
The word “productive” is used very intentionally. As marketers extend their focus into customer experience and engagement, that idea of service is critical.
An offer may indeed be the right action in some cases. However, in other situations, the customer may be seeking information or struggling to accomplish a task. Marketing organizations in the leading companies that we’ve evaluated are differentiating themselves with their ability to interpret the customer’s need and determine the best possible action to take at any point in time and at any stage in the customer lifecycle.
Continuous Customer Engagement Rules:
Those companies that practice continuous customer engagement have a set of rules.
- First, they break the typical silos and barriers to that get in the way of being customer focused and treating customers more holistically. The expand the traditional aperture of marketing and think about how they will serve best serve the customer.
- Second, they are beyond using “omni-channel” as a hype term. They are focused on building and creating a system of engagement that integrates and enables the the channels with rich, contextual customer insight and decisioning capabilities that enable them to listen and interact with customers much more effectively and dynamically.
- Third, they foster a customer-centric and authentic culture that focuses on establishing a win:win with the customer. These marketers focus on helping the rest of the company understand and empathize with the customer. They also work to ensure that the company has a clearly establish set of core values and then lives by those values in every way that it operates.
Does your company practice continuous customer engagement?
