The Customer Catalyst

CHAPTER 8ENGAGEMENT

How to engage with your customers

C-CHANGE GROWTH DRIVERS

• Create a VoC-derived, strategic customer engagement programme to increase co-creation and customer advocacy. Customer Engagement programmes help retain customer knowledge and protect customers for staff movements and attrition. Ultimately, the customer engagement programme will deliver tangible growth.
• Audit existing customer engagement programmes such as user groups or customer advisory boards and test them with your target customer personas. Ask yourself – are they all linked strategically to your customer-led, company-wide growth objectives? Appoint an executive sponsor, for example, a chief customer officer, of a pan-company customer engagement programme.
• View account-based marketing (ABM) as a strategic component of customer engagement, and not a tactical marketing campaign to drive short-term leads just in the current financial quarter. Work strategically with customers on ABM to inspire interactions that result in more productive mutual business outcomes.

Customer Engagement is about creating connections, via multiple channels, between the customer and an organisation. There are many customer programmes which engage customers in a particular area such as customer events or client hospitality. These are customer engagement activities that have merit. However, the real challenge in the Customer Economy lies in creating strategic customer engagement which adds value to customers and, in ...