How to increase customer engagement for your tech brand

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business. This results in fundamental changes in how a business operates and the value they deliver to their customers.

Technology has transformed consumer habits. Mobile devices, apps, machine learning, automation and much more allow customers to get what they want almost exactly at the moment they need it. What’s more, these new digital technologies have caused a shift in customer expectations, resulting in a new kind of modern buyer. They are constantly connected, app-native, and aware of what they can do with technology. Because of the opportunities that rise from using modern technology, customers often rate organizations on their digital customer experience first. This can lead to an increase in customer engagement.

The tech companies that do transform digitally are creating highly engaged customers.
And these customers are:

• 6 times more likely to try a new product or service from their preferred tech brand
• 4 times more likely to have referred your tech brand to their friends, family and connections
• 2 times more likely to make a purchase with their preferred tech brand. Even when a competitor has a better product or price
• Highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase, and have 3x the annual value (compared to the average customer).

Customer Perspective

The management team must articulate the strategic importance of customer service. Having good customer service can:

• Increase customer responsiveness and satisfaction
• Create customer loyalty and increase retention
• Lower marketing and account acquisition costs
• Enhance corporate image and competitive advantage

Ways in which companies can go about achieving this are as such:

• Speed of Service: ensuring that when a customer contacts the organization, the inquiry or problem is handled timely, efficient and during the first contact.
• Quality & Accuracy of Service: personalized service based on the customer profile and customer segmentation rules. Additionally providing a good quality product or service that will leave them happy.
• Ease of Service: when dealing with a customer you ensure all of their needs are met hassle-free and try to reduce (preferably none) the amount of issues you may face.
• Range of Service: flexible business processes that respond to customer demands and the range of requests.

Emotions

The emotional connection between a customer and a brand drives most of the interactions that occur. This includes sharing content, clicking through, and making purchases from the brand. Emotion also drives customer loyalty and the quality of the customer journey through all channels. By understanding how emotional activators trigger certain emotions, brands can craft experiences that are tailored to the brand’s goals, values and ROI, while improving the overall customer experience.

Tech brands using emotions to connect with customers

The values, mission and vision, corporate social responsibility statement and customer perception of a tech brand all factor into whether or not a customer believes their own values align with those of a brand. Tech companies will align these to target a certain demographic.

Different emotions can be used to create different emotional responses, depending on what the goals of the brand are. Psychologists have determined that when it comes to online emotional experiences, those that make a person happy tend to drive more shares, retweets and social mentions (we like to share what makes us happy), while those that make a person sad tend to drive higher click through rates (sadness makes us empathize with others).

Personalisation

Personalisation is another way to increase customer engagement. Customers want to feel special. This is why personalised content or products/services have higher success rates for tech companies. For example, if you are a company that specialises in start-ups, no two clients are going to have exactly the same journey. This is why you need to ensure you have the personalised touch for each client down to a T.

Many companies, especially tech companies, collect customer data but then don’t use it to enhance the customer experience and drive loyalty. A rookie mistake really, when the technology is out there to do it for you. Segmentation is key to this. All good CRM systems have the ability to assign characteristics to customers, which allows you to develop deep customer insights and create highly personalised content.

For example:

• MailChimp: Allows you to send highly personalised emails to customer segments, increasing the click through rate and conversion rate of emails. Personalised emails deliver six times higher transaction rates than generic ones.
• Visual Web Optimiser: This is a website optimisation platform which allows you to target different customer segments with different versions of the website, as well as testing different versions of web pages, to optimise sales or lead generation.
• Triggered emails: E-mails sent to customers following a specific action are incredibly effective with a 152% higher click through rate than traditional campaigns. Triggers can include abandoned carts, a price drop for a saved item or, cross selling after a purchase.

The use of AI, AR and 3D in your tech company also allows for a more personalised experience for the customer. Particularly through the pandemic, we are not really able to explore a store and see if a sofa matches our space, or if clothes match our body type, for example. Everyone is restricted to only making a purchasing decision online. That’s where visual support from brands comes in. Brands should help customers feel more confident to press the buy button without actually seeing products physically. 3D and AR can give us an almost 100% like to like representation of the product.

Chat bots integrate into your existing systems, including CRM and web support apps and learn from agents in order to provide a highly personalised service. Consumers having access to assistance when they want it will dramatically increase their experience, driving loyalty and increasing sales. Live chat is shown to have the highest satisfaction levels for any of the usual customer service channels, beating both email and phone.

Conclusion

In an industry that is so dynamic, it is vital that tech companies stay ahead of the game. Consequently, they can then increase customer engagement. We are living in an age where technology is becoming an important part of our everyday working and personal lives. The industry is constantly making developments. So your tech company needs to ensure they are utilising this in order to be a market leader.

Digital transformation offers organizations an opportunity to engage modern buyers. As well as this, they can deliver on their expectations of a seamless customer experience regardless of channel or place. It takes into consideration the other important customer drivers that are personalisation and having a customer perspective. Taking these customer drivers into consideration, along with the developments within the industry (such as AI), will bring success to your tech company!

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