What is Digital Customer Engagement and Why It Matters In 2024?

80% of customers prefer to interact with brands through digital channels.

That’s almost all your customers!

However, the question arises – 

• Are you paying enough attention to your digital channels? 

• Are you creating experiences that are unique to your customers? 

• Are you creating customer engagement in a digital world? 

• What strategies are employed to build lasting relationships with your customers? 

If you want to discover the answers, then let’s dive deep into an important aspect of customer experience strategy – digital customer engagement.

What is Digital Customer Engagement?

Digital customer engagement refers to the process of interacting with customers via multiple digital platforms like social media channels, websites, apps, etc to foster a long-lasting and deep relationship with customers. 

Unlike traditional engagement strategies, digital customer engagement strategy revolves around digital platforms and focuses on connecting with customers across multiple channels, providing a seamless experience across all channels. Effective digital customer engagement is driven by personalization, real-time engagement, and quick response and resolutions. 

However, how is it different from traditional customer engagement?

Digital Customer Engagement vs Customer Engagement?

The main difference is obvious – one deals with digital platforms and another deals with all channels – digital as well as physical. But, that’s not all.

So, if customer engagement does cover digital platforms, then why is it necessary to focus on digital customer engagement? Let’s discover.

Why is Digital Customer Engagement Important?

In this fast-paced world where technology is developing every day, you need strategies that focus solely on the digital aspects of your business. 

So, here are some vital benefits of implementing digital customer engagement.

1. Reaches a Wider Audience

Unlike traditional methods of engagement, which can be limited to geography or physical locations, digital customer engagement allows you to connect with a wider and diverse audience across the globe in real time. 

For example, you can create engaging videos or reels on Instagram or YouTube to promote your new launches, create hype around it, cater to a wider audience virtually, and grow your brand globally.

2. Builds Trust and Brand Loyalty

In order to create memorable and engaging experiences for your customers, you need to be a constant part of their daily lives, providing them with personalized recommendations, offers, relevant content, etc. This is not possible with your traditional engagement channels like in-store experiences or advertisements. 

This requires engagement through digital channels as these channels are virtual and experiences can be delivered in real-time, across the globe. So, share relevant content, respond to comments in real-time, and actively participate in online conversations. It not only fosters customer loyalty but builds trust among customers, both present and future.

3. Boosts Business Growth and Profit

A 5% increase in customer retention can result in a 25% increase in profit and the Pareto Principle states that 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your customer base. 

This shows that investing in creating an engaging and long-lasting relationship with customers via digital channels will help you increase the ROI of your efforts and increase the loyalty of the customers you already have.

4. Creates Personalized Experiences

With the growing rise of technology, customers are leaning more toward brands that give them experiences that are not monotonous and are unique to their journey, needs, preferences, and expectations. In fact, 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from brands that offer personalized experiences, highlighting the importance of creating tailored experiences.

This is where digital customer experience is vital as digital platforms gather detailed customer data, like browsing history, shopping history, wishlists, etc, allowing brands to create highly personalized experiences. This tailored approach can significantly boost engagement and loyalty.

To provide a seamless and positive experience to your customers via digital channels you need to manage and analyze feedback from all the channels your customers prefer. With SurveySensum, implement omnichannel management and analytics to gather, manage, analyze, and take action on feedback received from multiple digital channels!

The importance of creating digital customer engagement is clear, however which areas to focus on? What strategies to follow for effective engagement? Let’s find out.

How To Improve Digital Customer Engagement For Your Business?

Here are some suggestions for improving and implementing digital customer engagement for your business in the right and effective way.

1. Prioritize Channels That Your Customers Prefer, Not Just With the Best ROI

Facebook is the top most-used social media channel with over 3 billion monthly active users. So, from an ROI perspective, it’s the best channel to invest in, right? 

No, because even though Facebook has the most-used users, it might not be relevant to your business.

For example, a high-end luxury skincare brand might discover that its target audience – high-income consumers spend more time on Instagram and Pinterest, where visuals and aesthetics are prioritized. So, investing resources on Instagram or Pinterest is a wise decision rather than on Facebook for this brand. Similarly, you also need to first determine where your customers are engaged the most and meet them there.

2. Developing Not Just Compelling But Also Relevant Content

Investing resources in shooting videos and high-quality pictures for your brand isn’t going to cut it anymore, the content needs to be relevant for it to work. In fact, it was reported that 79% of individuals were convinced to purchase software or an app after watching a video. Now, that’s the power of creating and delivering the RIGHT content to your audience.

For example, a fitness app launching a new workout feature for Zumba enthusiasts. Now, instead of creating flashy videos, they decided to create content around addressing common customer queries, pain points, etc. This way they create content that adds value to their customer’s experience.

It’s all about ensuring that every piece of content that you create adds value, addresses customer needs, and fits into their current context or interests. Relevant content is more likely to engage customers, spark conversation, and drive actions like sharing, subscribing, or purchasing.

3. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize!

This one is a no-brainer. 

However, creating a personalized experience isn’t about giving away birthday coupons or free giveaways anymore. According to Salesforce, 70% of customers say that if a brand understands individual customer needs and expectations, they are more likely to stay loyal to that brand. This shows that brands need to evaluate their customer journey to understand their pain points, needs, preferences, and expectations in order to create unique and tailored experiences for their customers.

Conclusion

With growing technology and customers spending more time on digital platforms, businesses need to rethink their CX strategy and include customer engagement via digital channels as customers now expect the same experience on these channels. This approach doesn’t just improve customer satisfaction but also helps you engage with a wider audience globally in real-time and hence foster deeper relationships by creating personalized experiences.

However, implementing this strategy requires a robust digital customer engagement platform, like SurveySensum that empowers you to make every customer interaction meaningful, seamless, and personalized. This tool includes:

• Omnichannel management and analytics, allowing engagement across all customer-preferred channels and creating a unified customer profile through data from each customer interaction.
• Intelligent customer journey that helps guide customers smoothly down the funnel, while process automation ensures that team members across departments receive the insights they need in real time.
• Analytical reports and dashboards to provide a full view of each customer’s experience, enabling data-driven improvements.