Let’s face it – mastering customer engagement can feel like an impossible task. Even the best organizations face daily hurdles when it comes to connecting with their customers. This challenge has never been more paramount than it is today, however. Why? Because customers are changing. Their expectations are changing. How they want to communicate is changing. Their knowledge of your organizations is – yes, you guessed it – changing.
Today’s customer is more demanding, less patient, highly informed, and communicating with you on a variety of platforms. They are also less loyal than they’ve ever been – moving on to a competitor if they don’t get what they need the first time. While this shift has been happening slowly for some time, it almost feels like the switch was flipped over night. Expectations have changed quickly and companies are struggling to keep up. Customers want to have a personalized experience with the brands they do business with – meaning you, as an organization, need to know who they are and what their relationship is with your brand. Have they engaged before? If so, how? Can you proactively help them with a purchase or problem based on their history? They also want to communicate in the ways that work best for them – so you need to support a variety of channels. Do you have social, email, chat and phone support? Do those channels work together as the customer moves from one to the next?
The unfortunate truth is that even when organizations have this information it tends to live in disparate systems, making it extremely difficult for an agent to piece together the customer journey and deliver the relevant and personalized experience customers require. This lack of a full 360-degree view of a customer leaves support agents digging themselves out of a hole before they have even said “hello.”
So what can you do? Check out our infographic for tips on how to engage with today’s connected customer.
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