The pandemic has made the businesses realize that customer engagement is what will help them sail through these times. Customer Engagement is the emotional connection between a brand and its customers. It is a process where customers interact with the brand through various channels to develop and strengthen their relationships. Customers that are highly engaged with the brand, buy more, promote it, and are more loyal to the brand. The focus of any business needs to be on providing value beyond just products and services to its customer. Products and services initially attract customers, it is the quality of the experience along with relevant content that helps in developing long-lasting relationships.

Why is customer engagement important?

The most important reason for customer engagement is that it leads to brand loyalty by the customers and these customers serve as loyal advocates of the brand. They are more open to any kind of marketing and communication and spend more on the brand than on the competitors.

A study conducted by Ray Wang of Constellation Research found that companies that have improved engagements drive up-sell revenue from 13 percent to 51 percent, increase cross-sell by 22 percent and increase order size from 5 percent to 85 percent. These statistics indicate a direct correlation engagement of customers and the profitability of the business. Not having a customer engagement strategy in place means missing opportunities to interact with customers and building a relationship. There is no standard procedure for customer engagement as each company needs to tweak its plan as per their needs and target audience. However, focusing on clarity, empathy and simplicity is the key to successful customer engagement.

Having stated the importance of customer engagement, it becomes imperative to track the level of engagement at every step.  Let us explore the engagement metrics to track

1. Activity Time– Is the best metric for measuring the success of the customer engagement strategy. It refers to the total time spent by a user online interacting with the services offered and is one of the earliest indicators of how well the engagement strategy is working and if any changes need to be made to keep the users engaged. It measures the actual time spent by the user interacting with the service and factors out the time a user is idle. More time spend by the users on the website positively impacts the search engine optimization and increase the chances of the user converting to customers by buying the products and services offered. Similarly, time spent on social media channels helps to identify the content most valuable to the target audience.
2. Return Users-How often a user returns to you is a key indicator of the value they derive from your brand. It is often referred to as value frequency. Value frequency helps in understanding the patterns in customer behaviour and use it to the advantage of the brand. If the expectation from the user is to return daily then the value frequency should be measured against that. If the user is creating an account and then not returning may mean that the product or service does not appeal to him. This metric is important at later stages of growth and development in the design and addition of features. Keeping your user updated with the latest changes and developments is the key to keeping them engaged.
3. User Action– It is important to understand how the user is engaging with the brands. Google Analytics and other tools can be used to understand what the users are most focused on and what content is being viewed. Understanding the actions of the users will help in finding out any problems or pain points. These insights help in determining what is working well and what isn’t working well with the customers, which in turn can help in making improvements. Knowing the actions of the users’ help in understanding how best to keep them engaged with the brand.
4. Net Promoter Score–This is a measure of customer loyalty. In other words, how likely is it for a customer to refer the brand to others. This metric is important in understanding how well the products and services fulfill the needs of the customers. Customers are the biggest marketing asset for any brand. They do a better job of putting the brand in front of the potential user. The most common way to measure net promoter score is through a survey where the customers are asked to rate their experience and how likely are, they to recommend your product or service to a friend/family. To get the most out of the NPS is to ask some open-ended questions along-with some sliding scale questions. This helps in quantifying the NPS and take some necessary steps for improving customer loyalty and referrals. Ensuring a high score means exponential growth for the brand in the long-term
5. Daily active users vs Monthly active users– Daily active users are considered a vanity metric and do not have much weightage whereas monthly active users help in understanding the customer engagement in a better way. To understand how well the product/ service is performing with the users, you need to measure how many customers are actively engaging with the brand and how the brand resonates with them. By comparing the daily active users vs, the monthly active users will help in understanding if the users are sticking with the brand or not returning.

It is important to understand customer engagement and how it can benefit any business. It helps in understanding the customer interaction with the product/service and their likes and dislikes. It is ideal to have high customer engagement to have more loyal customers and higher returns. Tracking engagement metrics help in understanding what is working well and what is not to make changes accordingly.