The ongoing global crisis is pressuring brands to innovate faster to deliver superior digital experiences with the right customer engagement platform. Unfortunately, many brands are still struggling with their digital customer engagement strategy due to not having the right tools or fully leveraging the tools they do have.
Fully-engaged customers represent almost a quarter more revenue than average. Brands that don’t consistently strive to improve digital customer engagement won’t be able to compete with the brands that do. The first step in building the right customer engagement platform is to understand what it should do for your brand.
What is a customer engagement platform?
A customer engagement platform leverages technology to create a centralized, universal framework for all customer interactions. The right customer engagement platform for any brand manages complex customer relationships, from any channel, across all stages of the customer journey. Brands that deliver superior digital customer experiences, across all platforms, can increase revenue by 50%.
When designing the right customer engagement platform for their needs, organizations have various options to choose from. To build the right customer engagement platform, without the massive overhead of complete digital transformation, it is key to keep all lead/customer communications and activities in a single hub. To this end, it is necessary to leverage customizable workflows, smart bots, and AI that integrate directly with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
Without breaking the budget, brands can design the right customer engagement platform — coupled with the omnichannel reach of chatbots — to suit any business process, style, and ethos with SaaS applications and hybrid-cloud strategies that combine CRMs such as Salesforce, Hubspot, and more.
Why are customer engagement platforms essential?
Brands need to nurture complex consumer relations, making customer engagement platforms essential. Organizations with the right customer engagement platform experience increased conversions, customer satisfaction, and retention.
Consumers expect issues to be resolved in minutes, with services available across all channels at all times. This requires tools that are able to securely share data in real-time across teams, departments, and consumer-facing platforms.
With the right customer engagement platform in place, service requests from any channel can convert into sales opportunities — and sales can easily route issues to service for prompt resolution. Chatbots, agents, or any other automation can then follow up.
The right customer engagement platform gives you a 360-degree view 24/7
76% of consumers expect consistent interactions across all departments. However, most agree that experience is disjointed. Many feel that it seems as though they’re not even communicating with the same company when dealing with different departments. Herein lies a massive issue with disconnection.
A company with a rightly designed customer engagement platform will possess the cross-department finesse required to completely satisfy customers, whether via sales or service. This remains true throughout all customer journey milestones. The platform provides organizations the ability to tend to customer needs and highlight existing products and services, without increasing support overhead.
Service and sales can focus on the customer, rather than the incident or lead, with the right customer engagement platform.
- AI integrations can proactively engage with site visitors.
- Intelligent routing can send customers where they need to go.
- Returning customers are recognized, and their up-to-date conversation history is available to all agents for personalized support.
66% of customers believe companies should understand their expectations. Exceeding customer expectations, by making each interaction customer-centric, presents a unique differentiation opportunity for brands of all sizes.
Customer engagement platforms increase client conversions
83% of customers expect to immediately engage with someone when contacting a company. Proactive chatbots on your site present visitors with more options to move forward in the client funnel and increase conversions.
Team efficiency is increased with proactive bot solutions in place. Staff members have more time to focus on complex issues, and still remain available for anything an intelligent bot might route to them based upon the context of a chat.
Today’s smart bots can save up to 30% in customer support costs, speed up response times, and answer up to 80% of routine questions. Trust and customer loyalty are fostered when website visitors are promptly addressed and satisfied.
Customer engagement platforms build client loyalty
While humans are creatures of habit, we have no qualms about moving to brands that treat us best. Brands need to continually exceed expectations to build a foundation of lasting loyalty.
91% of customers who have a positive experience with a brand report they’re more likely to purchase from that brand again. A series of smooth and positive interactions between a customer and a company are the building blocks of a successful communication strategy that consistently builds client loyalty.
Customer engagement platforms deliver more value to clients
It’s necessary that you can meet new challenges with a leaner overhead. Your customer engagement platform should give you the power and flexibility to expand, scale, and pivot based on real-time customer data so you have the stopping power to meet these challenges head-on.
Analytics allow you to understand how and when clients engage with you. This understanding is essential so you can answer client questions quickly, adjust to their needs, and maximize staff utility.
Multichannel delivery makes every facet of an organization shine and unlocks opportunities from an existing client base. Performance metrics and data analytics simplify reviewing your marketing funnels’ effectiveness and the efficiency of your team members.
Customer engagement platforms reduce churn
An often-quoted Harvard Business Study concluded that customer retention rates — even as slight as 5% — can increase overall profits up to 95%. It’s plainly less expensive to retain long-term customers than it is to acquire new conversions.
The right customer engagement platform can automate retention strategies, such as industry-specific metrics tracking, so brands can analyze benchmark retention rates by industry and competitor.
Brands who maintain strong omnichannel customer engagement retain close to 90% of their customers. The longer you exceed your customers’ expectations, the more brand loyalty is cemented.
Aside from increasing profit. retained customers become brand champions, provide valuable feedback, and share their experiences with others.
Be where your clients are and cater to their needs
To compete in the upcoming post-pandemic world, it’s necessary for brands to be where their clients are and be able to cater to their needs. Always-on customer engagement potential increases the odds of every site visitor becoming a client, and every client becoming a loyal customer.
The right customer engagement platform provides companies the digital transformation needed to foster convenience, personalization, and empathy. The root of strong organic growth lies in building superior customer relationships.
SnapEngage integrates seamlessly with your CRM, helpdesk, project management, knowledge base, and other database and workflow systems. We understand simplicity is key; we streamline the process for you to customize the perfect customer engagement platform for your brand. To learn more about using integrated chat tools and custom automation for your brand, schedule your free, personalized demo of the SnapEngage platform.
