Why customer engagement is so crucial in driving innovation

No matter how big or small your business is, customers are the lifeblood of your business and engaging with your customers is vital in order to drive innovation.
22 May 2018

The ability to build relationships bring many benefits to businesses. Source: Shutterstock

With the advancement of the internet comes many opportunities for businesses to connect and form relationships with their customers.

The ability to build relationships helps businesses gain a deeper understanding of the needs and wants of the customers, and allows them to provide a more seamless experience.

In today’s oversaturated online market, customer experience is everything. If a consumer does not have their needs met, they will simply find another business who will serve them properly.

With this in mind, it is becoming a necessity for businesses to strive towards driving engagement with customers and delivering value. Not only will this benefit your customers, it will create new ways to drive innovation.

Turning customer feedback into ideas

Engaging customers helps unlock the power of feedback. By tapping into the opinions of your customers, you can gain a valuable understanding of how to improve your products or services.

In order to deliver customer satisfaction, you must learn to listen to them. And the more engaged your customers are, the more likely they will be to give you better, more detailed, feedback.

Are you following the feedback from your customers? Source: Shutterstock

You shouldn’t be afraid to ask your customers for feedback either. In fact, it is a common strategy for businesses to offer incentives to customers through paid surveys. This will give you valuable information as well as make your customers feel appreciated.

Boost customer retention

Building healthy relationships with your customers is essential for boosting your customer retention rate. The more effort you put into engaging with your customers, the more emotionally connected they will become to your brand and thus the more likely they will be to stick with the service or product you provide.

Enhance your marketing efforts

Through engagement with your customers, you will not only begin to learn about what they need, but you will also gain a deeper understanding of what they expect from your brand.

This knowledge of customer expectations will help power your marketing strategy vastly. You’ll be able to create more personalized campaigns based on this knowledge, tailoring your messages so they target the needs and wants of your customers.

A more targeted approach will increase the likelihood of converting your audience to paying customers- and this is consistently proven by research.

For instance, personalized email campaigns have been shown to receive 29 percent higher email open rates and 41 percent higher click-through rates than non-targeted emails.