What is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is quite a buzzword in online businesses. However, people often form a misconception about it. While many think it is about support and service, it is more than that. Encouraging your customers to continue shopping with you is fine, but strengthening their loyalty calls for the extra effort.
Simply put, customer engagement is the process of interacting and engaging between consumers and a brand. The process involves a variety of channels, such as social media, chatbots, websites, email, community forums, and more.
It aims to offer customers something valuable other than services or products. Exceptional products and services attract customers at the initial stages, but what will keep them around is relevant content.
This is known as customer engagement marketing.
This post will inform you everything you need to know about customer engagement, including the best channels to use, tools, strategies, its benefits, and everything else related to it.
Here is a video that explains what is customer engagement and its impact on businesses.
Source: The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau
Key Factors to Customer Engagement in Singapore
Customer engagement can be summed up into five elements.
| Element | Required |
| Awareness | √ |
| Enthusiasm | √ |
| Interaction | √ |
| Activity | √ |
| Extraordinary experience | √ |
Here is an outline of factors to consider when creating a customer engagement strategy in Singapore.
- Understand customer expectations and needs to build your relationship
- Provide not-notch customer care to maintain satisfied customers
- Get customer feedback to help you provide better service
- Value customer information
- Keep all communications transparent
- Interest your customers with new services/products/offers
- Provide useful information across channels
- Follow up with your customers to secure their needs
Benefits of Customer Engagement in Singapore
With so many ways to market your brand, you may wonder if customer engagement is worth the effort to attain your business goals.
These benefits will convince you.
1. Higher customer retention
Studies have shown that engaged customers bring more revenue to a company. This is why online businesses focus their efforts on retaining their customers.
Although there are numerous marketing tactics aimed at customer retention, building customer relationships through engagement has proven very effective.
Formulating and following customer engagement tactics ensures the relationship between you and your customers remains even after a purchase. By continually reaching and engaging with them through ideal channels, they are likely to stay loyal to your brand.
Source: SearchCustomerExperience
By building a relationship with your customers, you can identify their key pain points related to your products or services, so that you can address them.
2. Shorter purchase cycles
Customer engagement doesn’t only benefit you when it comes to existing customers; it also facilitates the sales cycle and increases customer acquisition rates.
Source: Superoffice
With the right strategies, customer acquisition is quite easy. Through these strategies, you can address your prospects’ needs and establish authority in your category.
Customer engagement also enables you to cater to different audience groups to show that you have more to offer as compared to your competitors. Defined strategies will ensure fast customer acquisition, thus significantly shortening the sales cycle.
3. Improved customer care
93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that provide not-notch customer care. Customers value excellent customer care as they interpret it as an effort on the part of the company.
By actively engaging with them through their preferred channels, you give them the means to raise any concern in the easiest way possible. Through customer care, they are likely to become loyal to your brand as they can always reach you.
Source: Twilio
The result is a high customer satisfaction score.
4. Increased recommendations
When you continuously engage with your customers, they naturally become loyal to your brand. Once they are hooked to you, they will promote your business to the public. These customers become your evangelists.
This is an excellent way for customer acquisition.
5. Outstanding brand identity
While your marketing efforts will never guarantee that you meet your business goals, a well-thought-out customer engagement strategy can enable customers to distinguish your brand and identify themselves with it.
You can achieve this by establishing a distinctive tone of communication and providing constant and relevant engagement with them.
6. Improved chances for cross-selling and up-sell
Once you have analysed the data from your campaign, you can identify what works for each audience segment. This will enable you to personalise recommendations to suit them and correctly target cross-selling and up-selling offers.
Advantages of Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
| Cross-Selling | Up-Selling |
| Improves your bottom line | Builds stronger relationships |
| Improves customer loyalty | Increases customer value |
| Broadens choices of products and services | Improves your bottom line |
| Improves customer service from the relationship | Increases the value a customer receives |
This will also allow you to provide more relevant recommendations and better lifetime value to your customers.
7. Increased subscribers
An audience will only subscribe to a business if it adds value to their life.
Engaging with your audience allows them to realise your brand’s value. As a result, they are likely to connect better with your business and encourage them to subscribe to your brand’s communication.
Customer engagement, therefore, is one of the easiest ways to get more subscribers. You can also use it to create an emailing list for your email marketing campaign in Singapore.
A Step-to-Step Guide to Customer Engagement in Singapore
In this segment, we will discuss customer engagement strategies, tips, channels, and how they work.
Customer engagement strategies, experience, and loyalty are one side of the coin.
How?
Customer engagement strategies will influence the customer experience.
Customer experience will then determine customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer will become loyal to a brand.
Source: study.com
There is, hence, a need to have the right strategies as they will influence the other two.
Research also shows that you are likely to retain 89% of your customers with the right customer engagement strategies. Furthermore, two-thirds of your company’s revenue is likely to come from this group.
Let’s explore different customer engagement strategies that work.
1. Unique brand voice
Customers relate more to a brand that has a personality. Businesses differentiate themselves by having a distinctive brand voice.
Glossier is one example that uses a unique voice to stand out from its competitors. By donning their brand personality as playful, authentic, and one who uses the brand’s skincare products to highlight her features, women crave that personality.
Customers will identify with such a brand and will look at it as an expert in that field.
2. Humanise your brand communication
To engage better with your customers, you must form a deep connection with them. Hence, keeping your communication devoid of any human emotion will not help you in this case. You need to humanise your communication for your customers to associate with you beyond what you have to offer.
For starters, you need to look into your channels and identify strategies that give them a human voice. You must be empathetic in your engagements to strike an emotional chord with your audience.
For social media, humanise your communication by being real and honest. Customers will appreciate that. You can engage with your customers through podcasts or videos as well to add a human face to your brand.
3. Personalise customer experiences
Winning over customers entails convincing them that you are more than making sales. Using personalised messages in all channels expresses just that. Thus, collect data to analyse your customer’s characteristics to mold your communication accordingly.
By personalising your messages to suit different groups, all your customers can find value in your brand and engage better with you.
You can start by personalising your email copies, providing customised deals, etc. Companies such as Amazon use software that makes recommendations based on customer search history and purchases.
4. Build your target customer profile
Your product or service meets the target customer profile.
You must identify your ideal customers by identifying their characteristics, purchasing behaviour, and location. You also need to determine which group contributes most to your revenue.
5. Know your customers well
After you have figured out your ideal customers, you need to make an effort to know them once they land at your site. This will increase customer acquisition, and you win loyal customers as well.
Pre-chat surveys work great in this.
You also need to know what drives your customers. Use short surveys to find out. Through the feedback, you can understand the customers better and provide what they need.
6. Have a robust team
Customer service can influence the loyalty of your customers. Research shows that 73% of customers will love a brand because of friendly customer care.
This is why companies such as Amazon have such massive success because of their outstanding customer service.
You also need to have the most customer-friendly team in place as it will determine the success of your company.
7. Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing has been around for a while. It is about acquiring data from internal and external sources to develop solutions to various issues.
Here are a few pointers of how to do it:
- Craft surveys based on your customer’s interests
- Arrange polls on your site and have your audience participate
- Ask for tips on your product development strategy
- Run the campaign for a while
This strategy empowers your customers, and they are likely to warm up to your sales funnel.
8. Put some edge to your posts
Customer acquisition is the goal of any marketing campaign. Your posts are capable of generating high conversions rates when they get a lot of attention.
Below are a few tips:
- Craft an interesting post title
- Use catchy images to prevent users from scrolling past
- Use a custom URL shorten and landing page that will gain the traffic
- Use a landing page that is related to the particular post message
- Craft different message versions for various social platforms
Top 6 Customer Engagement Channels in Singapore
With every digital advancement, the number of channels that brands use to connect with their customer’s increases. Channels are simply the medium through which the interaction takes place. The good thing about the digital channels is the ability to collect data, and you can measure the success of your campaign.
These are the most common online channels.
1. Emails
Emails are very effective in customer engagement. Every marketer relies on emails for most of the communication with their audience.
While emails vary from company to company, customer emails can be categorised into:
- Newsletters
- Transactional emails
- Thank You emails
- Signup/welcome emails
- Survey/feedback emails
- New service/launch emails
To get the most of this channel, you must ensure that your emails are mobile-friendly, use a persuasive subject, ensure that your email stands out by offering value, share customer success stories, and send out targeted emails based on customer interests.
2. Chatbots
Chatbots are changing how businesses conduct customer communication. They are the face of digital customer communication. Unlike traditional messaging apps, chatbots are instant, very interactive, and connects with your audience directly.
This allows online businesses to provide resolutions to customer queries and to build better relationships with them. Since these bots can learn and adapt according to customer preferences, they are more effective at predicting customer needs.
Automating tasks such as helping with information, helping customers through their buying process, resolving queries, and more also enables a business to improve their customer engagement and experience.
3. Social media
In online marketing, social media accounts for a considerable percentage of the campaign. Some sites, such as Facebook have more than 1 billion active monthly users, which is a very effective channel to increase brand awareness.
Social media is as impactful in customer engagement. While there is no sure way to a solid customer base on social media, some practices provide a means to keep your audience interested in your business.
- Be consistent with your posts to remain in your audience’s mind
- Make your posts interactive. For instance, you can use quizzes, polls, etc.
- Stay up to date with what your target audience is saying about you
- Provide satisfactory responses to customer complaints
- Humanise your brand by sharing customer and employee stories
4. SMS/Text messaging
Through the years, text messaging has remained a viable channel for customer engagement. Its ease of use, considerable low costs, average open rates, and little technological requirements could be the reason behind this.
When compared to email, SMS is also very effective in marketing.
| Monitoring Metric | Performance |
| Response time | 60X faster |
| Engagement rates | 6X higher |
| Response rates | 7.5 X higher |
| Campaign performance | 7X higher |
5. Voice assistants
Voice assistants such as Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Echo, etc. are taking conversational marketing to greater heights.
Voice assistants facilitate real-time interaction with customers, unlike SMS and emails. Through voice, they allow communication with customers in the most human way. This builds deeper customer relationships.
6. Video
Videos are very popular in online marketing. Whether presented on social media, website, or app, videos are entertaining, compelling, and worth sharing, which enhances user engagement.
Make the most of this customer engagement channel by being innovative with your content, formats, etc. to drive better engagement and conversion rates.
Top 6 Customer Engagement Trends 2020
In this digital era, businesses need to go a step further when it comes to engagement strategies. As a marketer, you need to be updated on the latest trends to stay on top of your industry.
These are the top consumer engagement trends to look out for in 2020 and beyond.
1. Artificial intelligence
It is projected that 85% of conversations will be managed by chatbots and virtual assistants this year. Many brands are already using messaging apps such a telegram, Facebook messenger, WeChat, and more to offer customer assistance.
2. Personalisation
Customers warm up to brands that treat them as individuals. Customer purchase increases when brands provide personalised content that users relate to. This has made personalisation a top priority for brands.
Brands have become keen on humanising each interaction by addressing their customers by name and using familiar languages that customers can understand.
3. Augmented reality and virtual reality
AR and VR are redefining how consumers interact with brands. Combining this technology with other creative strategies produces powerful results.
Some big brands, such as Apple, Snapchat, and Facebook, are integrating this technology to enable their customers to test their products before purchase.
4. The internet of things [IoT]
Internet of Things continues to influence customer service in a big way. Companies in sectors such as communications, finance, etc. are using IoT to transform customer engagement by offering solutions before any issue comes up. This happens all thanks to communication sensors that pick this information.
5. Geolocation
With mobile phones becoming more popular, brands are using geolocation tools to enhance customer service. Many brands are using this technology to track customers and send them personalised content.
Many brands are also using this technology to communicate relevant information and promote marketing offers.
6. Omnichannel experience
The omnichannel strategy is a common buzzword in online marketing. However, many brands still do not know how to optimise their channels.
Customers make an average of up to six touchpoints when making a purchase. Hence, providing service on various channels that customers prefer is essential.
| Channel | |
| Social media | √ |
| Website | √ |
| Mobile | √ |
| Call Center | √ |
| √ | |
| Warehouse | √ |
It is also paramount to provide value on all channels all the time.
Top 7 Customer Engagement Platforms
Customer engagement systems provide a means for multiple interactions with customers. Some of the features to look out for in a platform include:
- Multichannel communication
- Self-service features
- Live chat
- PR capability
- Marketing functionality
These are the best customer engagement platforms:
1. Bold360
BoldChat is a leading customer engagement solution that helps businesses effectively and quickly interact with customers across all channels. It has powerful features to target website visitors in a live interaction.
Features
- Live chat
- Reporting and analytics
- Omni-channel engagement
- Mobile engagement
- Security
Price
S$ 599 agent/years and a free trial for ten days
2. Avaya
Avaya has the most portfolio of services and software for unified communications provided in the hybrid or cloud. It explores connections, infrastructure, and conferencing solutions to offer real-time customer engagement.
Features
- Communication and messaging
- Omnichannel assisted experience
- Omnichannel automated experience
- Video and conferencing
- Actionable insights
Price
Contact for pricing
3. Live Person
This is an interactive platform that allows business managers to message their customers through their preferred channels. Customers can also contact managers and continue conversations with them.
Features
- Customer care professional
- Mobile and web messaging
- Customer satisfaction scoring
Price
S$ 49/month
4. Nuance Digital Engagement
https://www.nuance.com/index.html
This platform enables business owners to communicate with their customers at any time and on any device. The products provided are both self-service and agent-assisted.
Features
- Agent services
- Voice of the customer
- Big data analytics or data warehouse
Pricing
Contact for pricing
5. RedPoint
RedPoint delivers excellent customer engagement and data management solutions to enhance lifetime value, increase customer revenue, and strengthen loyalty.
Features
- Real-time interaction management
- Customer data platform
- Cross-channel marketing
- Digital transformation
Pricing
Contact for pricing
6. Chirpify
www.chirpify.com
This platform provides users with different social media monitoring functions, like keeping tags on relevant pictures, locations, hashtags, and check-in.
Features
- Messaging
- Automation
- Listening
- CRM and analytics
Pricing
Contact for pricing
7. Doxim
Doxim is a platform that gathers essential customer insights during every interaction to make targeted and personalised recommendations across all channels.
Features
- Cross-selling
- Digital operational
Pricing
Contact for pricing
Top 6 Customer Engagement Agencies in Singapore
It is crucial to know the best customer engagement agencies to work within Singapore.
These agencies have proved their relevance in the Singaporean online marketing industry.
1. MediaOne
MediaOne is one of the best digital marketing agencies in Singapore. We are preferred by hundreds if not thousands of businesses in and outside Singapore. Our dedicated team helps turn a brand around by providing the best digital marketing solutions.
Services
Address: 1 Neil Road #03-02 Singapore 088804
Phone number:+65 6965 7008
Website: https://mediaonemarketing.com.sg/
Email: enquiry@mm.com.sg
2. Global Dot Com Pte
They are a leading company in Singapore that empowers their client’s brands through vibrant campaigns and marketing strategies. They are highly experienced in digital solutions and have transformed brands, both locally and globally.
Services
- Consumer data analysis
- Brand solutions
- Digital brand touchpoints
Address: 7030 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5 #09-85, Northstar Singapore 569880
Phone number:+65 6908 5866
Website:https://www.globaldotcom.sg/
Email: hello@globaldotcom.sg
3. Visibiliti
Visibiliti focuses on boosting a brand’s products and reach more customers. It has worked with professional services such as Hitachi in Singapore.
Services
- Multichannel marketing
- Analytics
- Market automation
- Social
- Ecommerce
- Digital strategy
Address: 2 Kallang Avenue CT HUB #07-25 Singapore 339407
Phone number: +65 6871 4134
Website: https://www.visibiliti.com.sg/
Email: wizard@visibiliti.com.sg
4. Notion Age
This is a well-established agency that is trusted by local companies in Singapore. It is well-known for email marketing, online marketing, and other digital solutions.
Services
- Integrated PR and marketing
- CMS
- Digital and online marketing
- SEO
- Web development
- Content creation and marketing
Address: 331B Beach Road Singapore 199562
Phone number: +65 6438 8303
Website: http://notionage.sg/
Email: enquiry@notionage.com
5. ENCE Marketing Group
This a customer-driven agency. It stands for Experience New Customer Engagement.
Services
- Events
- Public relations
- Digital marketing
Address: 20 Cecil Street #26-02 PLUS Building Singapore 049705
Phone number: +65 3163 4653
Website: https://encemarketing.com/
Email: prominence@encemarketing.com
6. Impossible Marketing
This agency provides marketing services as well as courses and workshops. It partners with Google, Singtel, and other MNCs.
Services
- SEO and SEM
- Social media management
- Video marketing
- Email marketing
Address: 10 Anson Road #29-06 International Plaza Singapore 079903
Phone number: +65 9374 0111
Website: https://www.impossible.sg/
Email: enquiry@impossible.sg
Five Questions you Need to Ask an Agency Before Hiring
Before choosing an agency to work with, you need to ensure that you are a perfect fit. Working with the right agency will guarantee a smooth process, and your business goals will be met.
These are some of the questions to ask before hiring.
1. How do you communicate with your clients?
Ineffective and insufficient is a leading reason to client-agency goes wrong. The agency needs to clarify how the communication process will be like. The answer should be satisfactory as well.
2. How much experience do you have?
The more years of experience an agency has, the quicker the process will be. Other than that, the services offered will be of high quality as compared to those of new companies.
You also need to ask for case studies, testimonials, and references to give you some assurance.
3. What is your speciality?
The best agencies specialise in a specific niche. The agency you hire should have customer service as one of their specialities.
4. What are your charges?
Budget should be one of the major considerations when looking for a customer service agency. Although people usually have a hard time discussing money, you need to know what the service will cost.
You never want to get a shocker bill at the end of the process.
5. How transparent are you?
You need to know about analytics, reporting, and how often the agency will provide the data. The more transparency, the more successful the process will be.
Top Customer Engagement Tools Singapore
As discussed earlier, customer engagement is critical to the growth of a brand. Customer engagement tools make the process even easier.
Here are some of the best tools.
1. Hello Bar
This tool was designed with conversions and customer satisfaction in mind. It will help you earn more email subscribers and followers on social media. It is also a great tool to receive more social shares.
Features
- A/B testing
- Redirecting
- GDPR compliance
- Pop-up previews
Pricing
S$29/month
2. UserVoice
UserVoice helps you solicit feedback from your customers all in one platform. You can sort this feedback, filter, and sort it by importance.
Features
- Analytics
- Feedback collection
- Product roadmap
- Crowdsourcing
Pricing
Request quotation
3. Critical mention
This tool provides timely replies and identifies customer concerns. Through it, you can share content to see what users are saying.
Features
- Media monitoring
- Broadcast
- API
Pricing
Request for a quotation
4. Hubspot
Hubspot is a popular tool that allows you to conduct surveys to gauge user engagement. It also has a monitoring feature that helps you to know what users are saying about you on various platforms.
Features
- Lead generation
- Analytics
- Marketing automation
- Customer feedback
Pricing
Starts at S$50/month
5. Sprout Social
With this tool, you can share the same message across several channels. You can monitor user statements, provide automated responses, and reply to messages.
Features
- Engagement
- Publishing
- Analytics
- Listening
Pricing
S$99 Per User/month
Customer Engagement Courses in Singapore
You will sometimes need to take an extra step to learn about customer engagement. Undertaking a course is one of the best ways to equip yourself with the right skills.
Here are some courses to consider.
-
Drive Customer Loyalty for Service Excellence
https://coursemology.sg/course/drive-customer-loyalty-for-service-excellence/
Course Objectives: to cover the knowledge and application skills to enhance customer loyalty
Course Duration: 1 day, 9 am to 6 pm [8 hours]
Course Price: S$524.30
-
Drive Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction
https://coursemology.sg/course/drive-service-quality-and-customer-satisfaction/
Course Objectives: to cover knowledge and application skills in the assessment of the service and customer satisfaction levels
Course Duration: 2 days, 9 am to 6 pm [16 hours]
Course Fees: S$738.30
-
Innovative Customer Experience
https://coursemology.sg/course/innovate-the-customer-experience/
Course Objectives: To provide the desired customer experience in line with the company’s goals and values
Course Duration: 2 days, 9 am to 6 pm [16 hours]
Course Fees: S$738.30
-
Champion Service Innovation
https://coursemology.sg/course/champion-service-innovation/
Course Objectives: To establish a service innovation strategy to provide support service direction
Course Duration: 2 days, 9 am to 6 pm [16 hours]
Course Fees: S$738.30
-
Analyse Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction
https://coursemology.sg/course/analyse-service-quality-and-customer-satisfaction/
Course Objectives: to analyse service quality and customer satisfaction results
Course Duration: 2 days, 9 am to 6 pm [16hours]
Course Fees: S$631.30
Customer Engagement Professionals Salaries in Singapore
Customer engagement salaries in Singapore largely depend on experience and skills.
These are the average salaries:
| Job Title | Salary |
| Customer Service | S$36,676 |
| Customer Relations | S$42,750 |
| Call Center Operations | S$32,704 |
| Data Entry | S$30,030 |
| Problem Solving | S$46,794 |
Four Books to Read to Understand your Customers Better
If you want to expand your knowledge of customer engagement, you will learn new ideas from these books.
1) What’s the Secret to Providing a World-Class Customer Experience by John R. DiJulius
In this book, you will learn how renowned companies such as Disney get their massive number of employees to deliver consistent world-class customer service. You will also learn all the elements of customer experiences and how you can implement them.
2) Harvard Business Review on Increasing Customer Loyalty by Harvard Business Review
https://store.hbr.org/product/harvard-business-review-on-increasing-customer-loyalty/10322
This book is your friend if you want to learn the best practices to make your customers loyal and profitable.
3) I Love you More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad by Jeanne Bliss
Customers who like you and those who love you are two different things. You will learn how to get customers to love you enough to get the word out there about you.
4) The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk
This book sheds light on the way we communicate and how businesses and customers interact.
Top 3 Customer Engagement Events to Attend in Singapore 2020
Customer-care-related events shape customer relationships by sharing customer service tips, best practices, roadmap ideas, and more. These events also allow you to expand your network with customer experience experts.
1. Customer contact week Asia- 3rd-4th March
https://www.customercontactweekdigital.com/events-contactcentresasia/
Event agenda: Digital transformation has opened opportunities in the function of contact centers
Who should attend: Support heads, User experience executives, Contact managers
2. Oracle OpenWorld Asia- 21st-22nd April
https://www.oracle.com/sg/openworld/
Event agenda: A customer experience conference for CX enthusiasts.
Who should attend: Customer data analysts, CMOs
3. Customer Experience Asia Week- September
https://www.cxnetwork.com/events-customerexperienceasia/
Event agenda: CX. The conference will enlighten attendees on customer-driven decision-making to boost CX ROI and other metrics.
Who should attend: CMOs, Analysts, CXOs
Singapore’s Top Brands when it comes to Customer Engagement
The most successful brands in Singapore have one thing in common: excellent customer engagement.
These are some of the top brands that offer world-class customer engagement in Singapore.
Conclusion
Customer engagement is a key ingredient to customer acquisition and retention. Mastering the right skills and strategies for engaging your customers will give your brand the boost it needs in the online marketing campaign. The above information will steer you in the right direction.
Call us today at +65 69657008 for professional guidance on how to improve your brand’s customer engagement practices. We also offer holistic and practical custom digital marketing services in Singapore.
