Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is a connection between a customer and an organization which can happen through various online and offline channels of communication.Thedepth of this relationship gets established over a period of time over various interactions, actions or even opinions shared by our near ones.The result is an overall customer experience which then takes shape to being a positive engagement or a negative one.
In a banking environment today, gone are the days when interest rate or product differentiators attracted customers to a bank. With branch setups, banks had opportunities to interact and build on customer engagement and develop positive long-term relationships. But with digital banking fast becoming the key channel of engagement banks are in a dilemma to maintain and sustain such relationships. Also, today’s generation wants everything at their fingertips.Needless to mention we also want to be attended to as individuals. Banks hence have no choice but to raise their bar on improving their customer experiences.
The answer to a great extent today lies in being a true partner with the customer and less looking at him only to make profits.It is more like a marriage of two human minds. The bond will sustain till there is a great relationship going. Some 4 tips for such a relationship going from good to great are as below.
1. Focus on Differentiation – Banks need to set realistic expectations for their deliverables in general and about their relationships in particular. Which obviously means that a doorstep service for a wealthy client will be a bare minimum ask but an over the counter service in a branch or a 24-hour turnaround will not be unreasonable service for the general customer.
2. Rewards and Recognition – It’s important to have an emotional confirmation with your customer so that they know they are special, valued and you don’t take them for granted. This demonstration can be shown through different communications and actions. The key is to ensure consistency in such affirmation rather than they be loaded all at once. This could be as simple as a call or an email wishing a customer on his birthday or giving a ticket for two or a surprise gift on his wedding anniversary. Not to miss you hence get the family connects as well.
3. Improved Communication – Get to understand your customer’s inner world. Assessing customer behavior through his various interactions across different channels with analytics can provide insights to how you can improvise your customer convenience and even prompt him for necessary positive actions. An option to ask your customer on how the bank can make his financial life easier and convenient can also be undertaken.
4. Higher benefits v/s lower cost issues –The positive things really need to outweigh the negatives. Cost issues can come through delays in handling requests, hidden costs, escalations etc. Hence it’s very important to strengthen what’s already going well as this increases the opportunity to deal with those negative issues in the professional journey.