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How real-time customer engagement benefits your business? 

Before we get into 'how' real-time customer engagement impacts your organization, it is crucial to understand what it is. Generally, customer engagement is about all interactions and ways you interact with your customers. Those interactions should ideally make customers feel positively toward your company and brand.


What is real-time customer engagement 

There are many ways your customers can interact with you. Here are some examples: a customer calls your support line to report an issue. Or customer receives an email on your new product and clicks through the company's website to see what's happening. Or customer goes through your social media. You can go on and on, mentioning examples of customer interactions. The bottom line is that there are many of them. It is then up to you to make sure they feel appreciated. 

Such a customer-centric approach enables customers to create long-lasting relationships that benefit you and them in the long run. 

For a long time, It's been believed that customer engagement is just a valuable addition to the product or service you provide. Now, however, long gone are times when customer engagement is just 'useful'. It is crucial.  

With high levels of competition, customer engagement is a significant denominator in making you shine among competitors. This makes companies adopt various customer engagement approaches to boost customer relationships. One of these approaches is real-time customer engagement. Business that focus on customer engagement are not only focused on revenue but also value creation. 

These days, a good customer experience is given. What you should strive for is an exceptional experience. It is the best competitive advantage a company can secure. This is why some of the highest-performing companies focus on delivering more excellent service. They are aware that customers often value customer experience more than the price. Technically, this means you can charge more if you are sure you offer unbeatable service. 

Why is real-time customer engagement important 

At its core, real-time customer engagement is more than just having repeat customers. It is also about the importance of the emotional connection between the consumer and your organization. Engaged customers place more trust in your products, promote them and show you more loyalty. That directly impacts your revenue and other success metrics. Research by Gallup shows that a customer-centric approach can increase net profit by up to 10% and help sales grow to 66%. Al that follows an increase of customer loyalty by 25%. 


Real-time customer engagement is highly dependent on three core factors: 

1. Adaptability and speed 

Engaging with your customers in real-time is all about how fast and effective you can respond to their requests. That speed is relative and depends on the industry. It all 

varies from milliseconds to hours. Eventually, all that matters is that close 

waiting time is adequate for you and relevant to our industry. 

2. Cross-channel optimization 

Real-time customer engagement is all about good organization. Customers usually interact with you through many preferred channels, at different times through any device. Also, these interactions happen through inbound, outbound, digital or traditional methods. Since you can't tell where your customers will appear, you should prepare by orchestrating relevant interactions across touchpoints. 

3. Personalization 

The data mainly drive effective personalization for real-time customer engagement. Such data allows you to develop a strong sense of the customer. That includes their online and offline behavior and preferences. It would help if you regularly update customer profiles to gather more insight into their experiences. Personalization should always go beyond name and address and focus on the additional context, like past purchases. 

CRM solution - Live by ASEE

Benefits of real-time customer engagement 

Once a business adopts customer oriented strategy and starts offering more than just a product or service, customers will turn to them whenever they intend to purchase. This approach will assist you in building a community of engaged loyalists willing to overlook the price in favour of exceptional service. Here are some of the benefits o real-time customer engagement. 

1. Reduced churn and improved customer retention 

Engaged customers drive a significant percentage of a business's total revenue. That's why retaining existing customers is so important. Extensive research shows, time and time again, that engaged customers are responsible for the increase in profits. For example, research by Bain &CompaEngany states that an increase in customer retention of 5% increases profits by 25 to 95%. 

You can try it by constantly engaging customers and actively nurturing customer relationships. You can achieve this by regularly reaching out to them through their preferred channels, effectively solving their issues, introducing them to the new features, and educating and informing them about the latest industry trends. Consider platforms like Live - they offer many parts and functionalities that help you manage customer relationships through multiple channels. 

2. Improved loyalty and healthier customer relationships 

Putting efforts into engaging customers through multiple channels, it is inevitable that the result would be a strong relationship with them. You can constantly remind them that you care by regularly interacting with them about important things. As you begin offering more than just your service or product and start adding value to their lives (or business), your will automatically turn to you whenever they think of making a purchase. This helps building a community of highly engaged supporters willing to overlook the price in favour of unmatched customer service and exceptional products. 

3. Strong brand identity 

Customer engagement is one of the many different efforts that can help perpetuate a distinct brand identity. A well-thought-out omnichannel engagement strategy that keeps customers' needs at the forefront is going to be necessary. It lays a clear roadmap for continuous and relevant engagement and establishes a unique tone of communication. This communication method allows customers to identify with it and differentiate your brand from the competition. With every targeted social media post, newsletter, and blog piece that talks directly to your customers and keeps them hooked, you are getting closer to standing out from digital noise. 

4. Improved customer service 

Consider this: 93% of customers will likely make repeat purchases with brands that offer excellent customer service. You cannot undermine the importance of excellent customer service when running a business. For most customers, the level of engagement is what separates average from exceptional service. By engaging them on their most used platforms, you are actively helping them to interact with you. You also allow them to raise concerns without visiting the customer support portal or calling a helpline number. This repeatedly reminds them how they can make the most of your product/service and feel more connected to your business. 

5. Generates sales and revenue 

These days, consumers regularly read reviews before they make a purchasing decision. You don't want potential customers to stumble across negative reviews of your business. Let your most satisfied customers be your business's most prominent advocates. They are also more likely to purchase from you regardless of pricing. Knowing they are safe with you and that you will provide exceptional service will almost consistently outperform the competition's lower prices. 

CRM solution - Live by ASEE

Building a real-time customer engagement strategy with an omnichannel experience 

A key to creating a better connection with your customers is creating a real-time customer strategy. Once you put the effort to engage with your customers across different channels, what's necessary goes beyond them making a purchase. If you regularly interact with them about what's relevant to them, keeping their needs, priorities, motivations, and aspirations in mind, you constantly remind them that you care. 

A defined engagement strategy will also help you identify and understand the issues your customers may have when using your service or product. You can use this knowledge to effectively address and retain them. As we mentioned, your customers will try to reach you through multiple communication platforms. That's why most leading companies have a presence on various communication platforms. The key to any real-time customer engagement strategy is to be as fast and efficient as possible. Dealing with a plethora of different platforms can quickly become quite messy. Any communication, especially real-time communication, is prone to human error. That's why you should give omnichannel platforms a try. 

In order to create the best omnichannel customer experience, it is necessary to scale customer support across all available channels. 

Here are the benefits of omnichannel eCommerce that impact customer engagement

  • Consistent brand message –   Omnichannel platforms provide your customers with cohesive messaging about your company. The message you try to send always stays the same, no matter where a customer enters your brand. 
  • Improve customer support – If a customer reaches out to you, make sure you have active customer support. Redirecting customers across different channels for reaching out for help is not a good practice that leads to messy communication. The best way to avoid that is by switching to an omnichannel contact center platform. 
  • Understanding your customer journey – Omnichannel platform allows us to collect and merge customer data from multiple channels. Further, it gives you a complete picture of customers and their behavior, which gives you the power to personalize your customer journey. 
  • Personalize customer experience – Understanding the customer journey helps you personalize your customers' experience. Creating a personalized experience is crucial to omnichannel customers as they have a 30% higher lifetime value over shoppers who only purchase using one channel. 

Conclusion 

Providing contextually relevant messages in real-time can dramatically impact engagement with customers. Customers expect brands to know about them, regardless of channel and offer a frictionless buying experience. Real-time customer engagement strategies and technologies make that possible, so brands of all sizes should closely examine their goals and objectives to determine how they can apply real-time thinking to their engagement efforts. 

With customers having dramatically changed how they interact with companies – and indicate little interest in going back to traditional engagement models – it is incumbent on companies to monitor each interaction. 

Real-time engagement allows you to deliver relevance and personalization that strengthen customer relationships and ultimately drive business growth. 


Learn more about how the Live product family can help you support and improve your customer experience strategy.

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