Customer engagement program – Involving customers to build and sell “Their” products

Veterans in retail industry always knew the value of the customers. Once a customer always should be customer. No matter for how much small quantity or value the customer has approached our retail store, satisfy him to maximum. In future we would get big sales from “satisfied” customers.

In formal marketing term this is called as “Customer Lifetime value”.

It is important that customer feels “Important’. He feels as part of the organization. Realize that he is “Heard” and “Understood”. This can be achieved by various customer engagement program.

Following are few examples of Customer engagement programs:

Involve Customer in product development:

Yes. You have read it right. Involve customers’ right in product development. We develop products to satisfy customer needs, so why not involve him directly?

In this program, various schemes are launched wherein customer’s inputs are taken for product development. Sometimes it is even named after the person suggesting the details (E.g. XYZ recipe).

Is this program ever used in India? Look at the below examples:

Me & Meri Maggi

This program involved customers directly sharing their Maggi Noodle recipes which were showcased on Maggi website along with the contributors details.

This program also involved users sharing stories with Maggi, making Maggi unreplaceable component in their life.This campaign helped Maggi achieve loyalty of customers over their competitors.

Mobile Applications: Communicate with customer:

One aspect of customer engagement is building brand awareness. Constant, targeted and effective communication to customers at right time.

Mobile application is one of the way to achieve this.

Through mobile application, companies can communicate news, offers, also displays stores around based on GPS location in order to pull customers into their retail space (Online or showroom).

Customer Loyalty programs:

It is one of the way to achieve customer lifetime value.Here customer not only gets advantages (reward points) by shopping at your retail space multiple times nut also allows retailers to get vital customer buying behavioral data / trend. This can be effectively used in personalized communications to push products/offers “Specially” created for the esteemed customer. And who is not going to be happy for “Special” preferences?

Seeking for active feedback for product / service. (Feedback survey to understand online shopping experience by Flipkart).

Constant checking with customer regarding satisfaction level of product/services. (Eg. Calls by telecom companies to understand satisfaction level of the services)

It is easy for retailer to increase sales by gaining “Trust” of the targeted customers through customer engagement programs.

About Author:

Saurabh Kane is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: saurabh.k@spluspl.com