Consumer-Engagement: Internet's Domino Effect
Historically Consumer engagement has been quite a painful job for businesses. Whether getting feedback from customers about their products or services or getting opinions of end market consumers regarding a new project plan. Before the internet, it used to cost a heavy amount of the company's total budget and the results were not that impressive. In the internet era, you can achieve greater consumer engagement with little to no money. When it comes to consumer engagement we basically divide this into two categories: Marketing & Customer Satisfaction.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is not possible based on engagement alone. But, having a framework that allows customers to engage with the business faster does help. Every business gives a customer helpline number but the helpline number is often not that helpful. Most new businesses commit the mistake of automating service numbers with IVR assistants. And that frustrates a customer and it also costs business a good amount of money. But, after the rise of the internet and social networking apps, most businesses are relying on these faster ways to engage with customers.
Email became the first and most reliable form of customer engagement. Every business today has a customer email specifically used for customer service. Even though it can take up to weeks to get a response via email, the response is guaranteed. I myself when am frustrated with all forms of interaction whether it is a call or chat my final take on a company is email. I recently faced an issue with a bank credit card and couldn't get any help from their executive in lieu they kept on redirecting me to different service numbers. Finally, I sent an email to the nodal officer of the bank and the concerned team themselves called me for the resolution of the query.
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Social media especially Twitter has emerged as the primary form of instant engagement. Every business has to maintain a positive PR(Public Relations) and whenever they find a customer complaint on Twitter they reach out immediately to resolve the query. However, most new businesses commit the mistake of ignoring not-so-popular people's comments on social media. And these businesses end up paying a heavy price in terms of loss after the negative opinion goes viral. If there is anything I have learned about social media it is anything can get viral at any point in time.
Chatbots
With AI in its place, a new form of customer engagement that you can benefit from is chatbots. These chatbots can help resolve a lot of simple queries that customers might have. And if the chatbot isn't helpful it can always connect with one of the company's chat agents. However, this formula is dedicated to businesses with a good budget. As it could get expensive especially when deploying chat agents. Even though you can outsource this service as well but it will be expensive and is not recommended for small businesses.
Marketing
Marketing is indeed a form of consumer engagement in which in lieu of servicing you spread awareness about your products and services. Earlier marketing was limited to posters, radio, and tv adverts. Small business owners couldn't afford radio and tv adverts and relied on posters. If you wanted to take a survey for a new product you have to roll out forms to collect the data which had a higher rate of corrupt data. With the debut of the internet, the marketing game has completely changed. Today, you can do marketing of your business without spending any money. If you want to do a survey you can use an online form builder and share the web link it will automatically collect data for you. Content marketing is another gift of the internet to small businesses for marketing apart from the above-mentioned engagement tools.