Customer engagement has become almost a necessity in the business world today. Customers cannot do without effective engagement, and businesses cannot really tap into their customers’ needs if they don’t keep the conversation going. This demand has given birth to a growing number of solutions and software that aim at bridging the gap between customers’ needs and business growth. Customer engagement software, however, is not just about an application that links you to your customers. There are some less-known facts that are fascinating and good to know.
Hybrid Is In Style
Customer engagement model, user engagement model or a hybrid approach – which is your choice?
Concisely, ‘customer engagement’ is an approach of using high-touch customer service that requires human interaction, while ‘user engagement’ uses low-touch customer service like automated IVRs, video tutorial and online self-service tools to handle queries and interact with customers. Typically, the high-touch model is used by larger companies selling reasonably complex solution where multiple individuals are involved in the buying process.
Needless to say, a sale must drive enough revenue to cover the manpower and related expenses involved in customer engagement model. On the other hand, if you decide to choose the low-touch model, you will have to ensure that your product is easy to use and so spontaneous that in-app guidance alone will suffice. Clearly, the choice depends on the size and model of your business. However, the fact is that many companies are flocking towards the third approach, which is ‘hybrid engagement’.
As the name suggests, the hybrid approach involves engaging some customers with a high-touch relationship model, while others with a low-touch one. The beauty of this model is that it allows businesses to cater to individuals, large enterprises as well as small businesses, according to the demand and requirement. Undoubtedly, if your revenue allows, this model assures flexibility and better customer satisfaction as it covers all avenues of customer engagement, leaving no stones unturned.
What’s In The Payment Plan?
In most cases, the SaaS business offers two types of payment plans – ‘Pay As You Go’ and ‘Enterprise’. The obvious fact is that the ‘Pay As You Go’ subscriptions are easy to use and simple to set up. However, you might be interested in a basic yet not-so-obvious fact, which is that the ‘Enterprise’ customers are offered one-to-one relationship support, whereas ‘Pay As You Go’ customers are offered a self-service one-to-many model of ‘User Engagement.’ This means that if you choose ‘Pay As You Go’ plan, you will have no human interaction and will have to find your way out using IVRs, automated messaging services and maybe video tutorials at times.
On the other hand, if you are up for self-service, absolutely go ahead! And, that brings us to the third interesting fact about customer engagement software – self-service adoption continues to increase.
Self-Service Adoption Continues To Increase
A few years ago, Gartner predicted that “by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.” We are now at the threshold of that prediction and rightly so, the ability to automate processes such as banking transactions, automated hiring tools, doodle and more has transformed customers to a new era of independence.
Today’s customer demands more service and expects 24×7 customer support from businesses. While night-shift call centers have been catering to these growing demands, how efficiently can a sleep-deprived human resolve your queries after all?
Many companies are now sensitive to this concern and are investing in chat-bots that can replace night-shift employees and ensure needed support to the customers. Furthermore, with the advancement in technology, it has become possible to make the AI chat-bots respond more like humans, which can definitely put your customers at ease even while chatting with a machine-operated service.
While there are many such interesting facts about customer engagement software, the most important and well-known fact is that technology is constantly evolving and we can well expect something new to be introduced in the field of customer service as well. However, for now, customer engagement software is firmly grounded and is here to stay.