Customer Engagement Platforms
Providing a First-Class Customer Experience
Today’s consumers are using a ever expanding number of channels to learn about and communicate with companies. These channels include:
- Social media
- SMS
- Live support (chat and video apps)
- Websites
- Phone
- Consumer review apps
The interactions that happen on these channels include a wide range of touchpoints:
- Initial awareness or discovery of a company or brand
- Learning about a company’s products and services
- Reading reviews from other customers
- Requesting a price quote
- Leaving comments on social media
- Scheduling service appointments
- Writing reviews
- Requesting support for products or services
- Inquiring about job openings
Customer Experience (CX)
The sum of the interactions that a consumer has with a company amount to the Customer Experience (CX).
To provide a top-notch customer experience and succeed in a hyper-competitive market, it’s critical that service companies respond in a timely manner (including after hours) with helpful, accurate information.
Messages must be passed to the right people in the company quickly so that questions can be answered, appointments booked, follow-ups sent. Conversations should be closed only when the customer is satisfied with the response.
The problem is, with ongoing labor shortages many service companies are understaffed, with employees taking on multiple roles to tackle an ever increasing number of tasks.
The solution for providing a first class customer experience – regardless of the size of your company – is to employ a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) as part of your Customer Experience strategy.
Features of a Customer Engagement Platform
Customer engagement platforms are designed to help companies improve the quality and effectiveness of their customer interactions, and to better understand and meet the needs and preferences of their customers. Using workflow automation, a CEP manages communications with customers on their preferred channel, tracks customer interactions and feedback, and analyzes customer data to provide insights into customer behavior and preferences.
Features that are typically found in a customer engagement platform include:
- Contact management tools: For storing and organizing customer contact information, as well as tracking and managing customer interactions and communications to improve the customer journey.
- Customer service tools: Help to manage customer inquiries and complaints, and may include features like live chat, help desk software, and customer feedback forms.
- Marketing automation tools: For automating marketing campaigns and customer outreach with features like email marketing, social media marketing, and customer segmentation.
- Analytics and reporting tools: To help track and analyze customer data to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This may include features like customer segmentation, customer journey mapping, and customer lifetime value calculations.
These capabilities provide value by automating routine tasks and optimizing user workflows, with the goal of creating satisfying customer journeys.
To be effective, a customer engagement platform must integrate seamlessly with your existing tools, including CRM, Field Service Management and other software that your team is using. This tight integration helps to automate the movement of information into and out of your CEP, ensuring the consistency and accuracy of your data.
The Benefits of Using a Customer Engagement Platform
There are many benefits to using a customer engagement platform, including:
- Improved customer communication: A customer engagement platform can help companies streamline and improve their communication with customers, using features like live chat, email, and social media to reach out to customers in real-time and respond to their inquiries and concerns.
- Increased customer satisfaction: By tracking and managing customer interactions, companies can ensure that they are providing high-quality customer service and meeting the needs and preferences of their customers. This leads to increased customer satisfaction and repeat business.
- Enhanced customer insights: Gain a better understanding of your customers by tracking and analyzing customer data, such as customer interactions, feedback, and behavior. These insights can then be used to tailor products, services, and marketing efforts to better meet the needs and preferences of customers.
- Greater efficiency and reduced workloads: By automate and streamlining customer interactions and communications, it becomes possible to handle more customer inquiries and concerns in less time. This saves time and resources, allowing employees to focus on other important areas of the business.
Examples of Customer Engagement Platforms
There are several types of customer engagement platform, and the best one for a particular business will depend on its specific needs and budget. Here are a few examples of popular CEP platforms by category:
- Live chat software: This allows businesses to communicate with customers in real-time through a chat window on their website. Examples include Zendesk Chat, Intercom, LiveChat.
- Social media management tools: These tools help businesses manage and engage with customers on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Examples include Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social.
- Customer relationship management (CRM) software: CRM software helps businesses manage and track interactions with their customers, including sales and customer service inquiries. Examples include Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM.
- Email marketing platforms: These platforms allow businesses to send targeted and personalized emails to their customers and track the success of their campaigns. Examples include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor.
- Customer feedback and review management tools: These tools help businesses collect and manage customer feedback and reviews, which can be used to improve the customer experience and build brand reputation. Examples include Trustpilot, Yelp, G2 Crowd
Each CEP has its strengths and weaknesses, and you should evaluate each one to see which on is a good fit to help you achieve your business goals. You will need to determine whether you require automation features and how many workflows can be automated without impacting customer engagement.
Whichever CEP you choose, it’s important to invest in training for your team to ensure it is integrated into your business procedures to be as effective as possible.
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Think about all of the individual apps, files and messages you interact with every day. There are field service management apps, emails, text messages, spreadsheets, contracts, web forms, PDFs, social media messages and on and on.