Customer attraction and retention are the key ingredients that help a business thrive. And among the various types of businesses, the food business is one of the most competitive. This is particularly true for India, as we are some of the fussiest when it comes to food. That being said, if you get the basics right – quality and affordability – customer attraction becomes easy.
So what’s customer engagement?
In simple words, customer engagement is the communication between the customers and the business. Customer engagement can be a reaction, interaction or feedback and can occur both online and offline.
And, why customer engagement is important?
Customer engagement is a vital step in retaining your customers. It renders a high chance of achieving customer loyalty. Again, customer engagement can give you very useful insight towards your brand position, quality and popularity, which in turn helps in strategic planning for the business.
Here are three ways to improve customer engagement for your business that is simple to apply and has achieved for years. While there can be a lot to do here, and you can run your creativity wide and wild, these three can be a really good starting point.
Emotional Connect: Use of psychology to achieve customer engagement can have a separate article altogether. Emotional connect plays a vital role in earning customer loyalty. A simple example of ways to build an emotional connect with customers are:
- Wishing them in their special days birthdays and anniversaries and offering a discount or a free meal. Alternately, you may also add a small cake with the order, free of cost.
- Sharing stories of your brand. Your struggle, hardship, success, the stories told with emotion have the potential to anchor customers.
Social media: In today’s digital world, social media has unparalleled power to influence people and is invaluable when it comes to engaging with people. You could use to create interactive, engaging content like contests, quizzes and polls – the possibilities are endless.
Direct feedback:
Asking your customers for feedback is a classic way to gauge your performance and is a great way to engage people.
We are going to talk more on customer engagement in our upcoming posts. Are there any more points that you think we could add here? If so, then please do share your thoughts in the comments below!