Let us introduce our VANEIGENS Customer Engagement Flywheel, a set of aligned products, activities and departments driving the ultimate goal of a thorough customer engagement approach: satisfied, enthusiastic and even loyal ambassadors. In our flywheel, we distinguish three departments and several customer-oriented activities to achieve these goals. To start with, the engagement process is part of the daily journeys of all involved, core departments:
Sales – the start of a ‘journey of existing customers’ begins with the sales, purchase instore or via different channels.
Service – by offering the right service from the moment you get in contact with the customer, you are able to start connecting and interacting on a personal level.
Marketing – only when the sales and service have been successful, marketing efforts on existing customers can be effective.
Of course, this circle around the engagement cloud is continuously moving around and triggering activities along the journey of the customer. The main point is that engagement cannot be achieved via just one department, but should alwaysbe a shared initiative within an organization.
Around these core departments, the flywheel triggers the following customer-oriented activities: Act, Connect, Interact, Engage & Loyalize. With the act, we mean the purchase or sales activity. As seen in the flywheel, rewarding this purchase only is not sufficient. The purchase part can only create a satisfied customer, which is an important indicator, but insufficient to create a true loyal customer. So, after the purchase, we need to connect with the customer, for example through a loyalty program. Data collection and enrichment is key element for the sequence of the program and loyalization of customers. But connecting is not enough. Think about the number of programs you have signed up for, but haven’t ever interacted with and used the program? Too many, we guess… You are connected to all companies, but aren’t contributing to their growth. So, it is essential as company, to start interacting with your customers and literally work with the word ‘inter’, meaning: ‘between’. Therefore, interacting is not about spamming your customers with newsletters and pushing them with a lot of offers and information. Start the dialogue, get to know your customers and ask for their input and feedback. Only then you are able to engage them with your company. As soon as you are interacting with your customers, it makes sense to start involving and therewith engaging them in your development. Think about offering perks in terms pre-sales, invitations to unique events and door openings, sample new products, etc. By keeping to engage these customers in a personal way in combination with personalized rewards, you will be able to loyalize them and they will step-by-step become your loyal brand ambassadors. They feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued and unique. But be aware, when you mess up your next sale, you need to start all over again.
Think about layer over layer, step-by-step and offer the right rewards and incentives for the right stage in the engagement process to generate loyal ambassadors. Offering inappropriate loyalty perks to new satisfied customers canbecome a complete miss and will turn against your company…
IT & Data Infrastructure
In order to set up an interactive, engaging ecosystem, we typically need to focus on enabling an end-to-end platform, including all aligned sales, service and marketing systems. This can be any type of platform, as long as it easily integrates deeply with a CRM system that develops its technological architecture with machine learning and AI,and is open for all different communication tooling. With the right platform setup, additions of innovative tooling, correct implementation and integrated journey flows, the engagement flywheel will accelerate automatically with every step taking within the ecosystem.
Learn more about customer engagement and how it can be implemented in the core of your customer care, by taking a free consult with one of our consultants! Contact us and enjoy a learning experience with a good cup of (digital) coffee!
