When choosing a customer engagement platform, you want to make sure it has all the features you need to effectively acquire, engage, and retain customers and gather the right insights to help your business keep growing and thriving.

In this post, we’ll review 5 essential things you should look for when evaluating which customer engagement platform is the right one for you and your growing business.

Customer Insights

Insights and analytics show you who your customers are and how they interact with your business. You will go from not knowing your customers enough, to truly understanding what they need. The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them and increase their spend, as well as visit frequency.

The right customer engagement platform will enable you to build personal relationships with your customers with personalized and targeted offers and messages. Robust segmentation based on customer insights will empower you to automatically send the right message to the right person at the right time.

Some of the customer engagement metrics your customer engagement platform should offer include average customer spend, visit frequency, and lifetime value. These behavior-based insights and metrics will then show you who your top customers are, and how you can place a focus on them to further drive your revenue.

Customer Loyalty

The more loyal your customers are, the more likely they are to keep visiting your business and refer their friends to stop by. A customer engagement platform can help you drive customer loyalty and further develop the relationships you have with your customers.

You can actually increase your revenue by focusing on your VIP customers; those who spend the most and visit the most. By converting them into loyal customers with targeted offers you can exponentially increase your revenue.

For example, if you see that one of your best customers only visits your business during the week, you can send them a personalized offer that encourages them to visit on the weekend. This will increase their visit frequency and spend over time and develop those loyal customers your business needs to thrive.

Multichannel Marketing Campaigns

The more targeted your marketing campaigns are, the better customer engagement results you will see. Look for a customer engagement platform that provides you with the tools you need to send highly targeted, personalized messages that are segmented by customer behavior and purchase activity across locations.

You should also be able to measure the impact of your marketing campaigns by comparing the results of your campaign audience and a control group to see if your campaign encouraged customers to make a purchase. You should also take a look at who opened your messages, how many redeemed the offer you sent and how much revenue was generated as a result. Measure results in real revenue, not just vanity metrics.

Campaigns should be able to be executed across multiple channels including emails, texts and push notifications, all from one platform that is efficient and easy to use. The right platform will empower you to easily send out automated campaigns and increase your ROI, without needing an army of marketers and analyts.

Customer Feedback

Customers don’t always have a positive experience, and you need a tool that will provide you with insight into how your customers feel about your business. The right platform will capture customer feedback in real-time, as an indicator of customer satisfaction. It’s also important to be able to respond to that feedback quickly with personalized and private messages so that you can address any issues right away.

The more personalized and timely you are with your feedback, the more likely a customer is to remain loyal and maintain a positive image of your brand. Just asking for feedback increases visit frequency by 7%. Replying drives repeat purchasing up 14%. With the right platform, you will be able to capture satisfaction with every purchase. It will also let you know how each customer experiences your business and will allow you to address any problems right away.

For example, a loyal customer can let you know through your platform that they had a terrible experience at your Palo Alto location because you were understaffed and the wait was too long. With the right platform, you will be able to respond to them privately, in real-time with an apology, and if appropriate a personalized offerto come back, plus, you can resolve the staffing issue to prevent future customers from having a similar experience.

One great way to automatically capture customer feedback is by using your customer engagement platform to leave a Net Promoter Score (NPS) to evaluate their experience after each purchase. You can compare how all of your locations measure up and be able to spot satisfaction trends immediately. The best platform will have natural language processing and artificial intelligence so that it will be able to quickly spot trends and opportunities for improvement while flagging the most important reviews.

The quicker you are able to address any negative feedback, the more likely that customer will not leave you a negative review on third-party sites like Yelp, for other potential customers to see.

You can also use positive reviews you get to drive traffic for your locations. We all know traffic is the lifeline of growing businesses and making the most of your positive reviews is a no-brainer.

Revenue Reporting

In order to keep growing your business, you need to be able to measure and prove campaign effectiveness in real revenue, as opposed to vanity metrics.

You definitely want a platform that goes well beyond opens and clicks. You should be able to see what your earned rewards from your customer loyalty program are, as well as campaign revenue. By measuring the success of every campaign, you will be able to see the impact of your efforts and see store sale growth year over year.

Choose a platform that takes the guesswork out of marketing with detailed reports for every campaign and quarterly business reviews.

Wrap up

There are several customer engagement platforms to choose from and you want to make sure you select the right one for your business that provides you with the tools you need to drive revenue and grow each quarter.

Choose a platform that has robust customer insights, a built-in customer loyalty program, personalized campaign tools, customer feedback features, and extensive revenue reporting. Implementing the right customer engagement platform can dramatically impact your business and help you achieve your overall revenue goals.