Driving new age customer engagement effectively

The Covid-19 pandemic has compelled the world to transform at an unprecedented speed. The past practices made way for new habits birthing a “new normal”. Massive shifts in consumer behavior are accelerating complete business reorientation. The impacts of these changes on customer engagement are expected to be significant and permanent, says an Accenture report.

The pandemic has increased the usage of digital channels phenomenally and to capture this new breed of tech savvy customers, organizations need to upgrade their customer engagement standards. As the number of customers going digital continue to rise steadily, post pandemic their digital experience expectations will also increase.

Digital has become the default

According to a global consumer pulse survey conducted by Accenture, 71% people have reported spending more time online during the crisis, while new users expect their online purchase share to increase by 10%. Overall 32% purchases are being made online and 37% online purchases are likely to persist post-crisis. In the light of these findings it is suggested that companies must advance their digital engagement capabilities speedily to gain a competitive advantage.

New rules of engagement

Empathy and trust have become extremely important factors of customer engagement during Covid times. With increase in customer interaction volume, the time span for forging relationships with customers has decreased substantially. Considering the uncertainty of the current times, showing empathy via digital channels and refurbishing that clients’ safety is the brand’s top priority has become the new standard for customer engagement.

The interaction modules must be relationship based and digital experiences need to be more human. Organizations must focus on customer engagement that aims to reinforce the value of their products and services through reassurance and confidence building.

Leveraging the power of data for effective customer engagement

The wonderful thing about digital channels is that here everything is measurable. Tracking and analyzing the data from their customer engagement initiatives will help organizations to understand what is working and what it is not. Its time for companies to use their human resources and AI capabilities to create effective customer engagement campaigns to drive revenue and scale success in the current times of uncertainty.

Uniting human creativity and the power of data

Deploying AI for tracking campaign performance would challenge the marketers to rise to the opportunity by being smarter, better and more unique. Marketers must harness the power of emotions and creativity to devise customer engagement experiences that are persona specific. Data will help marketers to take these campaigns to the right set of customers.

Data should be used to determine broad industry trends and customer inclinations and then the marketing team should design a campaign that best communicates the brand message in a way that touches the specific customer base most effectively. For a customer engagement campaign to be successful, it’s conception must be fueled by data, executed by people and targeted basis data.

Strategy based integration

Right now, consumer sentiment is changing rapidly and if companies want to engage with customers effectively, they must work fast. To act with speed, all the departments of an organization must work together. Top leaders can use data driven approach to integrate different teams in order to arrive at strategies that can be implemented immediately. For instance, to launch a new customer journey, marketing, sales and product teams must collaborate, ideate and execute campaigns.

Companies must accept that the pandemic is the gateway to a new future and there is no returning to the old ways. Hence, they must forget the old rules of engagement and transform themselves by adopting new ways and respond to shifting customer behavior with speed and agility.