Customer engagement is essential to long-term account retention and your company’s bottom line. We’ve talked about the connection between delivering customer value and customer retention. But, according to Gallup, companies that have greater customer engagement, boost productivity, revenue, customer ratings, and share of wallet by two to three times more than if they only attain customer satisfaction.
And the same study showed that a key element of driving customer engagement is creating customer impact, also known as value. This impact is delivered in the form of desired customer outcomes that affect the customer’s organization or bottom line. So, it’s not surprising that companies that deliver the greatest value to their customers also have customers that are 72% more fully engaged.
This makes sense since key contacts, especially executives are busy and may not be aware of the value you are delivering unless you are keeping them abreast of progress. So, don’t wait for quarterly business reviews (QBRs) or semi-annual meetings to share updates with your VIP clients. Engage with customers on a routine basis with updates, and educational information, and to gain feedback.
Engaging with customers, particularly C-level contacts, on a routine basis can be challenging, but ongoing communication is necessary for various reasons including collaboration to meet shared goals, and to ensure value delivery. Since customers have a litany of competing demands on their schedule each day, chances are that engaging with their KAM is not at the top of their list.
This doesn’t need to be an insurmountable obstacle, though. Account managers simply need to find creative ways to remain relevant and top of mind without further impacting client schedules.
So, in lieu of meeting or chatting with your key customers and C-suite contacts, try some of these alternate techniques to boost engagement with VIP customers.
Inform vs. Involve
You don’t necessarily need to have a meeting or phone call with clients to communicate with them. Instead of investing valuable time trying to get on their calendar, keep executive contacts abreast of status, successes, and challenges. You can even collaborate asynchronously to continuously advance and adjust account plans or share updates and insights between live meetings. Here’s how it’s done.
Educate and Inform
Keep your clients informed by sharing relevant content such as articles, use case examples, and white papers to help them continue advancing toward reaching their goals. You can offer insights on market trends and make them aware of industry events that may be of interest too. This is beneficial to the client without being intrusive.
Digital Collaboration
There are various ways to continuously collaborate and communicate with client contacts asynchronously by employing a shared Google doc, trading voice notes, or sharing a digital whiteboard. These are great ways to get input from multiple parties without coordinating calendars to find the perfect meeting date. So, you can provide updates, exchange ideas, provide feedback, adjust plan details, and strategize continuously.
Get Personal
As you get to know contacts, learn more about them personally. Find out what is important to them beyond the work at hand – Are they shooting for a promotion or planning to buy a new home, and What hobby are they super excited about? Then, when you’re sharing relevant content, you can mix things up by sharing information that helps them advance their personal goals as well. They will appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Provide Tailored Updates
Who doesn’t like to track their progress? But clients get busy. Since you’re already tracking progress toward attaining client goals, you can share interesting data metrics from the previous week or alert clients when they are nearing a milestone. Then offer to chat live to dig further into the data if they’d like. This is unobtrusive but shows the customer the value they’re receiving from your product or service.
Video
Updates and other quick messages can be made more engaging by sharing videos like Vidyards or Looms accompanied by a brief recap paragraph over email. You can start these emails by restating the problem you and your client are working to resolve or the goal it relates to. This makes the communication purpose-driven and more appealing to busy client contacts.
Handwritten Notes
Snail mail may be old-fashioned, but taking the time to send a handwritten note to key contacts from time to time will get their attention and will certainly be remembered. Send one to celebrate hitting client milestones or simply to say “Hello.”
Boost Customer Engagement Between Meetings
Customers who receive the most value from your product or service are more engaged and easier to retain in the long term. Keep clients informed and engaged between meetings and calls through various means. Digital collaboration, video, tailored updates, and hand-written notes are all effective options. Engaged clients are well-informed of the value you provide and more likely to renew when the time comes.
Looking for other ways to boost customer engagement and retention? Register for KAMCon.
