Question of the Week: Why Are My Customers Not Staying Engaged?

Ever been in a floundering relationship where your partner eventually ends it by saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”? 

Well, this isn’t like that. At all. This time it IS you.

You and your customers are in a relationship. Yeah, it might be one-sided in terms of the customers ALWAYS getting what they want, when they want it, where they want it and how they want it. In a personal relationship, this dynamic would send you to a therapist. Or divorce court. 

But this is how the business-customer relationship thrives. 

Providing Great Customer Service Is Not Optional

It’s become a pre-requisite for doing business. So if your customers aren’t sending you flowers or writing you love songs any more, you need to focus on optimizing your customer service.

Establishing a superior brand experience is awesome. But it doesn’t end once you get the customers. The “superior” component of the experience also means keeping them. And like most relationships, it takes work. It’s worth it though. Emotionally engaged customers are three times more likely to recommend a product and be a repeat buyer.

So where do you begin?

Remember that customer engagement is about relating with your customers as fellow members of the human race. (At least, most of them.) So start by looking at your actions.

Certain Behaviors Could Be Affecting Your Customer Engagement

Think about times you’ve been poorly treated by a company. Did you find yourself thinking, “I would never treat a customer that way.” 

Of course you wouldn’t. Not consciously. But turn the mirror back on yourself and take a look at where you might be stumbling. 

Here are five ways businesses consistently lose customer engagement.

1. Talking At Customers

Your customers don’t want a constant “But wait, there’s more!” sales pitch. And if you’re forever engaged with the hard sell, that’s what you’re giving them. 

Rather than talk at them, talk TO them. 

2. Insufficient Explanation

If you are merely supplying a product or service to your customer, then wiping your hands clean and loudly announcing, “My work is DONE here!” then cut it out.

Aside from being needlessly dramatic, it’s also not cool to assume that just providing a product or service is sufficient. Customers have spent their hard-earned cash and want to know how to get the best out of your product or service.

3. Not Engaging Past Initial Sale

It’s called the Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am (or Sir) Principle. Okay, it’s not. But it doesn’t matter because nobody likes it.

4. TMI

Too much information. You know what happens when you bombard your customers with untimely and irrelevant information? You give them carte blanche to actively ignore you.

5. Keeping Secrets

The absolute best way to eliminate any possibility of building long-term trust is to keep secrets from your customers. Transparency is the name of the game.  

Do any of these behaviors sound familiar? If your friends or colleagues treated you this way, would you stick around? Why should your customer?

Here’s the nitty gritty: 

There Must Be Consistent Conversation to Keep Customers Engaged

And not the chirpy “Thank you for being a (some dark empire corporation) customer! We appreciate your business,” variety. That’s just lip service. And customers know when they’re being… serviced.

Consider the customer journey as one of frequent interactions. Whether they’re dealing with a service rep, a tech person or you personally, the level of satisfaction across the board must be consistent.

Getting a feel for when and how to best interact can be a challenge though. Let alone how to do it at scale. So you may want to consider a personalization engine. This software has the ability to trigger action based on a customer’s behavior and then learn from their interaction.

And finally, ask yourself this. Are your employees happy?

Happy Employees Go A Long Way Toward Having Satisfied Customers

Treat your employees well. Those who are highly productive, motivated and passionate will represent your company in a positive light. After all, they’re the ones who drive the customer experience. You’d be well advised to know who’s at the wheel.

And if all of the work involved in keeping customer engagement feels like too much these days, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can help.