Customer engagement (CE) is the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led or the medium of engagement can be on or offline.

Customer engagement has been discussed widely online; hundreds of pages have been written, published, read and commented upon. Numerous high-profile conferences, seminars and roundtables have either had CE as a primary theme or included papers on the topic.

 

 

Customer engagement marketing places conversions into a longer term, more strategic context and is premised on the understanding that a simple focus on maximizing conversions can, in some circumstances, decrease the likelihood of repeat conversions.

 

CE aims at long-term engagement, encouraging customer loyalty and advocacy through word-of-mouth.

 

In store, or offline customer engagement is best leveraged by associates’ extensive brand and product knowledge, and the digital access that supports it. 

 

Online customer engagement is qualitatively different from offline engagement as the nature of the customer’s interactions with a brand, company and other customers differ on the internet. Discussion forums or blogs, for example, are spaces where people can communicate and socialize in ways that cannot be replicated by any offline interactive medium.

 

—  The concept and practice of online customer engagement enables organizations to respond to the fundamental changes in customer behaviour that the internet has brought about as well as to the increasing ineffectiveness of the traditional 'interrupt and repeat', broadcast model of advertising.

—  Due to the fragmentation and specialization of media and audiences, as well as the proliferation of community- and user generated content, businesses are increasingly losing the power to dictate the communications agenda.

 

Today, leveraging customer contributions is an important source of competitive advantage – whether through advertising, user generated product reviews, customer service FAQs, forums where consumers can socialize with one another or contribute to product development.

Online customer engagement refers to:

—  A social phenomenon enabled by the wide adoption of the internet in the late 1990s and taking off with the technical developments in connection speed (broadband) in the decade that followed. Online CE is qualitatively different from the engagement of consumers offline.

—  The behaviour of customers that engage in online communities revolving, directly or indirectly, around product categories (cycling, sailing) and other consumption topics. It details the process that leads to a customer’s positive engagement with the company or offering, as well as the behaviours associated with different degrees of customer engagement.

—  Marketing practices that aim to create, stimulate or influence CE behaviour.

—  Metrics that measure the effectiveness of the marketing practices which seek to create, stimulate or influence CE behaviour.

 

The need for customer engagement

CE-marketing is necessitated by combination of social, technological and market developments:

o Businesses are losing the power to dictate the communications agenda.

o Decreasing brand loyalty: 

Customer engagement as a social phenomenon

—  People also engage online in communities that do not necessarily revolve around a particular product, but serve as meeting or networking places.

—  People's online engagement with one another has brought about both the empowerment of consumers and the opportunity for businesses to engage with their target customers online.

— A 2011 market analysis revealed that 80% of online customers, after reading negative online reviews, report making alternate purchasing decisions, while 87% of consumers said a favorable review has confirmed their decision to go through with a purchase