Customer Engagement: Making Unremarkable Custom Experiences

Written by Diane M. Calabrese | Published August 2024

Take a deep breath and imagine a place where everything hums along. Serenity meets efficiency.

Self-checkouts have disappeared. At the grocery store, cordial and attentive employees not only tally purchases but also pack bags. Obstacles of corrugated boxes and disheveled and halfempty shelves are a bad memory.

Every positive engagement for a customer is unremarkable. Products function “out of the box” and accomplish tasks as promised, and they are reliable.

The remarkable encounters for a customer are those that end with damaged goods, missing parts, or misdirected products. In a sense, customer engagement all centers on ensuring that every customer experience is unremarkable.

Ascertaining what a customer wants, how things can be done better and done better still, is where it begins. Following through to perfect outcomes is where it continues.

“The overarching theme for customer engagement is building relationships,” says Aaron Lindholm, CEO and president of Veloci Performance Products in Burnsville, MN. “This happens across various touch points, phone calls, email, social media, direct mail, face-to-face visits, tradeshows, and more.”

In a relationship individuals know and understand each other. “The core of customer engagement involves understanding their needs, challenges, and pain points,” says Lindholm.

It’s not an either/or situation on the digital/real-world dichotomy when a business aims to connect with customers. It’s both.

They are “equally important,” says Lindholm. “Digital is fast, efficient, and cost effective. Real-world engagement develops deeper relationships where you can get to topics that digital typically doesn’t cover.”

Judicious use of customer feedback is part of the contemporary world. “Allowing customers the opportunity to provide feedback in surveys, monitoring your unsubscribe rates for email, and listening when they provide direct feedback are all important,” says Lindholm. “Following industry standards through some research is also helpful.”

Balance. We know it when we see it, from a ballerina on toes to a gymnast on a parallel bar. And we know it takes dancers and athletes years to perfect their performance and ongoing effort to maintain it.

It’s not a bit different for the way a business perfects its interaction with customers. How do we recognize perfected balance in business?

“A relationship that matures enough to provide mutual benefit to both our customers and our business is a strong indicator of balance,” says Steve Jones, assistant sales manager in the wash division at Dultmeier Sales in Omaha, NE.

The equilibrium extends to choices in how to establish and maintain connections. “A balanced approach is important here as neither the digital nor real-world face-to-face engagements are alone sufficient,” says Jones.

Finding a definitive answer to how much contact is too much isn’t easy. Quite possibly individual variation in preferences among customers means that what some consider TLC [tender loving care] in engagement may overwhelm others.

Jones explains that he does not have a definitive answer to how much engagement is the correct amount. “I would love to know the answer,” he explains, because some contact software seems to be “off target” in who it approaches.

We all have had the experience of “how did I get this solicitation?” “Lease a Jetta” may be less surprising than “consider our baby formula,” but we know the targeting algorithms go awry.

The key is to identify the optimal approach, and that will be unique to each company.

“Some years ago customers were advising us that our outbound LTL [less-than-truckload] rates were not competitive,” says Jones. “While processing a directship order from a vendor, I asked for a freight quote to compare with the quote received from our company’s distribution.”

The information from customers led to study and changes. After finding that the rate through the broker for its company was “nearly double that of our quote from the vendor,” says Jones, terms were changed.

“The terms of our purchase orders were changed from third-party billing to prepaid and add [PPD and add],” explains Jones. It enables factory choice of carrier. “This collaboration between sales, distribution, and purchasing has resulted in better and more cost-effective service to our customers.”

Take It To Heart

Let’s be honest. Unsolicited customer feedback skews negative. Satisfied customers rarely take time to give positive feedback. Surveys in every form—from informal chats at tradeshows to QR short forms—help reach the happy buyers.

And even the happiest buyer may have a useful comment that can make a business stronger. The idea really is to develop a give and take with customers that leads to long-term association.

What does engagement with customers mean to Doug Rucker, owner of the Doug Rucker Store in Porter, TX? “It means creating and continuing to build a relationship with customers that shows them the value of purchasing with us,” he says.

“The value has to be communicated at every interaction we have with them, whether it is by phone, email, text before the sale, and…after the sale,” explains Rucker.

To that end, he adds that digital and real-world engagement are both important to him.

“Digital helps to reach customers and bring them in,” says Rucker. “Then real-world communication takes over.”

The all-channels approach is unlikely to change for many reasons. “In a perfect world, I guess, if we could do everything via digital—where you never have to talk to a customer, and they just buy over and over—that would be easiest,” says Rucker. “Kind of like mailbox money.”

“But the hypothetical is not real practical in a service business or a small retail business,” continues Rucker. “You have to build and cultivate the relationship by real-world communication. It’s the old saying: ‘Persistency gets them, consistency keeps them.’”

Be sure to make the persistence meaningful. “Try to make sure each contact is providing something of value and not just trying to sell something,” says Rucker.

Assess carefully. “Monitor responses and respond accordingly, and if their history is that they are not purchasing or engaging in any way, remove them from your list,” says Rucker. “For those that are purchasing, limit your contacts to once a quarter, every other month, or something that fits your model.”

A great deal can be learned from customers. “Let your customer talk while you just listen,” says Rucker. “Take notes as you listen, or even ask if you can record. Video chats are great as you have the opportunity to see each other and can easily record them for future reference.”

Just as there are different modes for communicating with customers, there are different depths. Indeed, Linda Chambers, brand and sales manager at GCE/Soap Warehouse Brand in Norcross, GA, points to three levels.

“Any time a potential customer creates an interaction with us, it is engagement,” explains Chambers. “And there are three levels: one, asking for information by phone or email; two, giving us information like filling out an online form; three, purchasing online or in person.”

Chambers explains her company puts the “focus on real-world engagement in person or on the phone.” But digital is always in the mix.

“We use digital contact to drive prospective customers to real-world engagements,” says Chambers. The digital connection allows a company to extend its reach and be found by customers across a wide region.

“We use the digital to establish our presence in the industry, educate on our services and products, create engagement, and then transition those engagements to the real world for sales—and again follow up with digital engagements after the sale for repeat sales and interactions,” says Chambers.

Care is taken not to overdo it, explains Chambers. “Only engaging when needed is the approach,” she states.

“We use social media to educate and make offers and only occasionally send out an email, no more than once a quarter or so,” says Chambers. “If the customer sees an offer or sees that we provide a service or sell a certain product, then they can reach out to us at their convenience to make a purchase.”

Another dimension of customer engagement is the way it informs purchasing and inventory. Chemical buyers at Chambers’ company are often repeaters.

“We try to figure out by customers’ buying habits when and which chemicals they are most likely to be needing in the near future to ensure sufficient stock on hand,” explains Chambers. “We will also do example quotes for customers, showing them where if they buy more at one time, they most likely can save money on shipping and have less chance to be without chemical when needed.”

One part of customer engagement that Chambers’ company continues to analyze is how to best track engagement in a calculation of return on investment (ROI). “That is our biggest challenge,” she says.

“When we get a report showing we had so many contacts that came to our website, looked at the phone number or placed a call to us, and looked at a product on the website but did not buy versus the number of online sales, it is very hard to quantify those numbers,” explains Chambers.

Assigning ROI to one type of contact may prove difficult. Yet the complexity of so doing demonstrates all forms of contact matter.