7 Tools You Need to Make it in the Customer Engagement Era

Did you know that the majority of customers expect you to go the extra mile to keep their business, but a whopping 71 percent of customers don’t think companies are doing enough?  This is because as of late, the rules of customer engagement have changed drastically

Simply acquiring customers is not enough for today’s businesses - the goal now is to deliver an amazing customer experience (CX) at every interaction so that you not only acquire customers, but they become your loyal fans. You must engage customers like never before, along the entire journey from awareness to lead. 

So, here are some tools, according to Business2Commity, that you should use to boost your company’s CX.

Relevant customer insight. Relevant insight enables employees to anticipate and solve customer needs. Make sure you are tracking social and online information to understand opinions and attitudes.

Flexible applications. Happy, empowered employees deliver better customer experiences.

More than CRM. Your CRM strategy must expand and be able to embrace social listening, social engagement, e-commerce, and cross-organization customer analytics.

Imagie via webindiasolutions.com

One unified team. Collaboration tools should extend beyond marketing, sales, and customer service. This cross-organization orchestration is also the secret to your delivering on your promises faster than the competition.

Seamless workflow. Bring the back office to the front office with business processes that span organizations. Your customer shouldn’t feel a transition when they go from marketing, to sales, to billing, to customer service, and back again.

Best practices. Save employees’ time for the activities that will make a difference to your customers. A strategic business partner can help you stay on top of the ever-changing best practices for your industry.

Cloud-based agility. You can’t allow internal issues about whether systems and processes will scale or adapt, keep you from being in tune with your customers’ needs. Let your customer’s changing needs drive your pace of change. Cloud solutions deliver instant value while extending the capabilities of your existing systems.

About the Author: Amanda Ciccatelli, Social Media Strategist of the Marketing Division at IIR USA, has a background in digital and print journalism, covering a variety of topics in business strategy, marketing, and technology. Amanda is the Editor at Large for several of IIR’s blogs including Next Big Design, Customers 1st, and ProjectWorld and World Congress for Business Analysts, and a regular contributor to Front End of Innovation and The Market Research Event,. She previously worked at Technology Marketing Corporation as a Web Editor where she covered breaking news and feature stories in the technology industry. She can be reached at aciccatelli@iirusa.com. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.