Highlights:
- Customer service has moved online
- Highly engaged customers deliver 23% more revenue
- 5 easy tips to increase customer engagement
These days, it’s no longer enough to offer high-quality service to customers when they’re patronizing your business. If you to increase customer engagement, you must also find ways to actively interact with them in between visits to your business.
Engaging with customers after they leave your shop creates an emotional connection between patrons and your business. Research from Gallup shows that increasing this connection directly translates into a better bottom line, with fully engaged customers delivering 23% more revenue than the average customer.
You can’t engage with customers after they leave if you don’t have their contact information. Luckily, we’ve already collected it for you. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
Clearly, it pays to find ways to bump up your business’s level of customer engagement. Here are five tips:
1. Encourage customers to give you direct feedback
Your customers have many options in how to spread the word about your business. Offer incentives for them to contact you directly with feedback rather than going straight to an online review site where you lose control of the conversation and the ability to truly personalize your customer interactions.
2. Respond to online customer reviews
It’s difficult to get a negative review from a legitimate customer removed from sites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook, so the next best thing is to respond empathetically to customer comments online. Research suggests up to 70% of complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve their complaint. Remember to thank those who write positive comments, as well.
3. Use digital tools for communication
Local business owners have countless ways to engage their customers today, from customer relationship management (CRM) software to social media to texting. Make the most of these through two-way communication rather than just pushing messages to customers and prospects.
4. Identify and connect with VIP customers
Your best customers are worth the most to your business. Find ways to better understand who they are, what they like, and then reward them with special loyalty promotions.
5. Incorporate customer feedback and thank them for their contributions
You can learn a lot about your customers from what they say about your business in online reviews. Follow their concerns and be sure to address them as quickly and directly as possible. Sometimes, online feedback can lead to big revelations that improve the business. (For an example, read about how Kimana Littleflower used online feedback to improve a signature dish at her South Carolina restaurant, The Junction Kitchen & Provisions.)
When you listen to your customers and respond to their feedback, you build engagement that leads to more sales and repeat business from loyal customers. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!