The main aim of any business should be to grow to reach as much of the wider public as possible. How else do you expect to make any money? The only way to grow in this successful manner is to constantly improve upon everything that you do. From a manufacturing standpoint to human resource issues, almost every aspect of your company can be fine-tuned to produce a better result. But how are you supposed to know where changes need to happen?
Customer Engagement
Other than yourself, the people that want your business to produce the best results are your customers. They are the ones putting their money forward, after all. Any customer that has a good experience is far more likely to use your company again or recommend your services to others. If they do not, then they can spread negative word of mouth about your company. Either result can have a drastically negative effect on the amount of money that you stand to make.
Receiving regular feedback in this way is known as customer engagement. Even a single negative review can point you toward areas where your business needs improving. So how does a company get involved in customer engagement?
Social Media
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The main focus of social media when it was released was to connect you to other people from around the world, mostly your friends. While these social platforms were mainly used by teenagers to keep up with their friends when they first appeared, almost everyone has a use for this type of communication- even top businesses.
Any modern company can easily create a social media account to post news and updates on their chosen platform. However, you may find it best to use as many social media platforms as you physically can. Customers and other members on the site can also interact with your social media team to provide feedback or ask questions.
Alternatively, you can use your social media team to peruse each platform to search for relevant information that people are sharing about your company. Whatever you choose to do, the aim of social media customer engagement is to identify the running themes about your company among the public while also portraying yourself as an approachable entity so that customers are more likely to provide you with honest feedback in the future.
Google Reviews
If you wanted to get more specific, then you can always look at google reviews. A google review is a specific review that anyone with a google account can use to rate and review your service. Google might just be the biggest search engine in the world. That is why it is important for you to pay attention to their reviews. Google ranks its search pages by relevance and value, which means that too many negative reviews on google are going to prevent your company website from appearing well in the search results associated with the product or service that your business provides. Nobody clicks on anything beyond the first page of search results, so it is important that your site lands high up.
A company cannot delete any negative user reviews that appear on google. What you can do instead is address the problems that a customer had so that it does not get repeated. Knowing where your weaknesses lie can prevent you from making the same mistakes again and having them appear in more negative google reviews. If you want to get more out of these customer reviews, then you can always use a google review guide. You may be worried about fake reviews damaging the reputation of your company, but there is no reason to. If you suspect a fake review, you can always report it to google. Any fake negative reviews will be removed after careful analysis.
Chatbots
Technology has made it a strange time that we live in. Artificial intelligence and other virtual tools are always being introduced to help businesses make the right decisions to improve their performance. The virtual tool that you should use when it comes to customer engagement is a chatbot.
You can put chatbots on your company website to help guide your customers around your site or to ask some of their questions. A chatbot can help you find out if your customers are asking the same question so that you know what areas of your business create the most confusion. Therefore, you can address these issues to remove some of this confusion or add some of the most asked questions to a frequently asked questions page to save people time in their search. AI isn’t the only way to use chatbots. You can also appoint staff members to man the chatbots on your company website to give your customers more detailed responses to their questions and queries.
Utilizing Feedback
Now that you know how to achieve customer engagement, it is probably best to know how you should utilize this information. Every place you look to receive this feedback will give you a new way to use this information. Since social media is more of an informal platform, your customers are more likely to give you direct feedback. This type of information is better used to find out how your company is perceived in the public eye. You can then use this information to adjust this perception as you see fit. Google reviews are more likely to highlight specific issues that you can then trace back to specific departments in your company for assessment. Lastly, online chatbots can help you to identify any areas of confusion that are present in your current business model. You can use this information to dispel any worries that face your potential customers.
A Quick Summary
As a business leader, you cannot possibly be everywhere at once. This means that some areas may slip through your line of sight so that they are of a different standard from what you would expect. Fortunately, you can always rely on customer engagement to point out these issues so you can make the best out of your company.
