Organizations around the world want to improve their customer engagement efforts but don’t often do enough. Also, they sometimes make mistakes which actually work against them instead of for them. This post talks about some of these mistakes so that you can watch out for them:

No focus on experience

The experience that customer undergo in the course of making the choice to but the product or service has a huge impact on the final decision. Therefore, in the initial stages, the experience is often more important than the actual offering, and organizations that do not focus on this experience and optimize it for customers will risk losing them to someone who does indeed focus on the experience. Digitization today allows firms to offer their clients great experiences at a very affordable price, and they should take advantage of this.

Not measuring the efforts

It is not enough to set up some sort of engagement mechanism – its performance has to be evaluated periodically to ensure that it is on track to giving the results it is supposed to. If not, these efforts have to be tweaked and tested till the right results are obtained. However, many organizations stop at the implementation level, and do not bother to measure their engagement efforts. Without measurement, steps can never be taken to optimize them, and organizations missing out on these will risk their engagement approaches become obsolete.

In-your-face promotion

Customers today are highly-informed, and are aware of the choices they want to make. Instead of guiding the customer into making a purchase, if you promote your products in their faces, you risk losing them forever. Gone are the days of outbound marketing when such promotion was acceptable, but today, customers are tired of these. In their place, what you need to do is to create a genuine interest in the minds of the customers, and inbound marketing efforts help in this case. Therefore, employ these more and promote your products subtly instead of doing it aggressively. Supply the prospect with the information he or she needs to make a decision and then give it some time. You can also keep communication with them during this period so that they don’t lose recall.

Not involving them

An important component of engagement is involvement. Customers are the reason for the business to exist in the first place, and their preferences and opinions shape the product or service offering. Therefore, it is important for organizations to collect feedback from their customers on how satisfied with their offerings, and how can they be improved.

Also, organizations can go one step further and involve them as focus groups to test out new and innovative ideas to see how they receive them. Also, involved customers are more liable to become ambassadors for the brand, and bring in new business.

Therefore, involving customers in some decisions is not a luxury – it is a necessity for organizations wishing to closely work with their clients.