Customer Engagement & Mode of Interaction

Last December, many experts were calling 2010 the year of social media—and in many ways they were right. Facebook now has 500 million users, and Twitter signed on over 100 million users in 2010 alone. Nielsen has found that Americans spend a quarter of their time online at social media sites, a 43% increase since 2009. It’s no surprise, then, that marketers around the country are touting the importance of a social media presence in business, and praising customer engagement software for social media management. Yet PeopleMetrics’ 2010 Most Engaged Customers (MEC) study reinforced the age-old idea that face-to-face interaction is best as far as customer service is concerned.

In the MEC study, PeopleMetrics compared engagement levels for customers interacting with a brand in-person, online, and over-the-phone. Customer satisfaction feedback from the study revealed that Fully Engaged customers are more likely to have had face-to-face interactions with a brand. More than half (52%) of Actively Disengaged customers had phone contact with a company, compared with just 18% of Fully Engaged Customers. On the other hand, 76% of fully engaged customers had in-person interactions, versus 48% of Actively Disengaged customers. In other words, customers are more likely to be engaged when they have had in-person interaction with a brand.

Authentic customer service is challenging to achieve over the phone because it is more difficult for service representatives to read the customer’s mood. During in-person interactions, eye contact and facial expressions allow for a better understanding of each customer’s mood and personality. Furthermore, many customer service call centers are so focused on metrics such as call volumes that they discourage the kind of small talk and humor that can endear customers and give service reps insight into each consumers’s state of mind.

However, it’s unrealistic in this day and age to expect companies to conduct all of their customer service in-person. Nearly every company today interacts with customers via multiple channels. The challenge is to ensure that your productivity metrics don’t trump the customer experience. A customer feedback management system can help your managers monitor customer engagement levels, and quickly respond to any service slip-ups. Such Enterprise Feedback Management software gathers all customer touchpoints into one easy-to-read dashboard, which employees at every level can check to determine the current state of a company’s customer service.

Additional Resources:
Enterprise Feedback Management Dashboard Tools to Improve Efficiency
The Importance of Customer Satisfaction and Customer Engagement in Business Outcomes
Benefits of Assigning Customer Engagement Research Access Levels

The Pinnacle of Customer Engagement: Genuine Service

Over the past few months, we’ve outlined the key findings of PeopleMetrics’ 2010 Most Engaged Customers (MEC) study, which analyzed over 15,000 ratings of 67 brands in 12 industries to establish a hierarchy of characteristics companies must demonstrate to achieve high Customer Engagement. We’ve talked about why Customer Engagement matters, and how companies with a compelling business offer, consistent caring service, customer trust, and extra effort from employees see the highest engagement scores. So far, we’ve created the foundation and core of our pyramid toward Customer Engagement. Now, let’s explore why genuine service sets apart “the cream of the crop” as far as Customer Engagement is concerned.

Dedicated, engaged customers, like all human beings, crave genuine interactions with others. The findings of this year’s MEC study confirm what business gurus like Joseph Pine and James Gilmore have claimed for years: the customer experience is now where service companies must focus , and a genuine service experience is what the world’s top brands now deliver. PeopleMetrics’ research verifies that companies that create authentic relationships with their customers achieve higher Customer Engagement scores—which, in turn, leads to higher profits, stock prices, and a slew of other positive business outcomes.

What does authentic service look like? Our respondents made it clear that they’re looking for real smiles, active listening (including asking relevant questions), and eye contact. In general, authenticity falls into four categories:

Sincere, Honest, Helpful Service. As one Saks Fifth Avenue customer remarked in our survey, “You can usually tell when people are being ‘fake’ in their compliments or interactions. The employees [at Saks Fifth Avenue] seem very genuine and sincere.”

Real Smiles. A Trader Joe’s customer expressed this customer desire well, saying, “Their eyes as well as their actions smile. Their voices are friendly and even when they’re busy they acknowledge me so that I know they are aware of my presence without being rude to anyone else involved.”

Recognize and Know the Customer. We all want to feel special, and employees who know customers by name foster higher engagement. One Costco customer explained, “Yes, they all recognize me as being a Costco member...in fact, some of the employees that were in one location where I first joined recognize me and they know I have been a member for many years.” A Cartier customer put it more simply: “[Cartier employees] always know my name and address me as a friend.”

Cares as a Friend Would. Many would scoff at the idea of a corporation being a consumer’s friend, but companies with the highest Customer Engagement scores indeed do form friendships with their customers. One Progressive customer expressed it this way: “When you call on the phone, they seem like they actually care about your particular problem or concern. When they deal with a claim, they consider what you want to do, as well as what their opinion may be. One car I had was involved in an accident, and I so wanted it fixed. The adjuster went out of his way to try to make this so for me. In the end, the car did have to be totaled because the frame had been bent. But, he really seemed genuine in his concern for my wants.”

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Many market research firms focus on improving the shadow (a company's reputation), without thinking about how to how shape the tree (the service patterns informing that reputation). Measuring customer satisfaction isn't enough; leading companies also need tools to design customer-centric processes. Unfortunately, very few customer feedback management guides include tools for translating survey results into increased organizational authenticity. PeopleMetrics' feedback management software helps our clients achieve authenticity, the pinnacle of Customer Engagement.

Additional Resources:
Why the Ritz Carlton is #1 in Customer Engagement: 6 Customer Love Factors in Their Credo
Customer Engagement is the New Competitive Advantage
5 Fatal Mistakes in Customer Engagement Surveying

[photo: McD22]