There is an old adage in sales: it’s easier and cheaper to keep an existing customer than to go find a new one. This sentiment has absolutely stood the test of time, but the tricky part is that the methodology for customer engagement has evolved so drastically over the years.
These concerns have given rise to the concept of customer relationship management, more lovingly referred to as CRM. Brands are making concerted efforts to nurture their relationships with their customers throughout the entire customer journey, not just at the beginning, thus, making it much easier to achieve the goal of retaining existing customers.
In the spirit of engaging customers most effectively, Retail Technology Insider wanted to share an interesting customer engagement approach we came across that was originally published on the Pitney Bowes company blog. In his article titled, “Closed Loop Customer Engagement – Five Steps to Success,” ISM Inc. Founder and President Barton Goldenberg explained the importance of customer interaction and corporate accessibility through what he calls “closed loop customer engagement.”
Here, Goldenberg discussed how closed loop customer engagement is “capable of both leveraging current levels of engagement and driving enhanced engagement in the future.” A few of his steps include:
- Channels of Engagement: “Closed Loop Customer Engagement begins with fully-exploiting whatever channels your company now uses to sell its products and communicate with customers. These sources of customer input and feedback may be online or off-line, and flow through your sales, marketing or customer-service functions – probably all three.”
- Gather Relevant Data: “Next, Closed-Loop Customer Engagement requires a structured approach to gathering relevant data from each of these channels. But accumulating data is not enough. You must also be able to analyze and derive actionable insights from it, for use in subsequent interactions and outreach efforts.”
- Holistic Customer Profile: “Data is less useful if it is anonymous, or if it is only available to one part of the organization. A holistic customer profile, or customer master file, takes data from every available channel of engagement, links it to individuals, aggregates it in one place and makes it available across silos. This makes possible seamless collaboration among business units to sell and service customers.”
To read the rest of Goldenberg’s steps on closed loop customer engagement, visit the original article on the Pitney Bowes company blog here.
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