According to a recent Gallup poll, customer service is an opportunity to create customer engagement. Keep in mind that Gallup found that only 15 percent of customers with problems are engaged with the company. Engaged customers aren’t just a reliable source of money, they are loyal advocates who can raise brand awareness and promote the product or service. Continue reading to learn why customer engagement is critical for small businesses.

Why Customer Engagement Matters

Customer engagement goes beyond the traditional limits of customer service to create a personalized and genuine customer-business relationship. Conventional customer service revolves around employees finding out basic information and meeting their customers’ needs. For example, home improvement employees typically ask find-out questions to learn about what the customer wants and then direct them to products that meet the customer’s preferences and budget limitations. If all goes well, the customer may return. However, the financial success of every small businesses depends on having a group of loyal, repeat customers. This is only possible through customer engagement.

Customer engagement goes beyond mere financial transactions and lays the foundation for small businesses to establish long-term relationships with customers. Customer engagement would involve the employee asking more specific questions about the home improvement project. As the customer and employee converse, the employee is able to gain an in-depth understanding of the customer, their background and future needs. The result is that the employee can recommend additional products, how to save time or money and even additional resources for expertise and industry information. Because of the engaging and meaningful conversation, that the customer is more loyal and psychologically connected to the small business.

What does the Research Say?

According to Forbes magazine, the proven benefits of customer engagement include better sales, service and safety. For example, customers are more satisfied with employees who are customer engagement professionals. This is, customer engagement builds a long-term, genuine relationship between the company and the customer. On the other hand, customer engagement increases sales. For instance, one company increased their customer engagement scores by eight percent and experienced a 300 percent increase in sales. Employees engagement will increase revenue. Overall, customer engagement is about establishing and cultivating meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships.

Customer Engagement in Small Businesses

Small businesses have limited financial and human resources. In order to remedy this, they can get a helpful AFN business loan and use creative customer engagement techniques. For example, the Small Business Association(SBA) recommends that they improve customer engagement through social media sites, such as Facebook. Social media platforms are excellent ways to digitally engage customers, raise brand awareness and increase customer loyalty. In contrast, small businesses will also depend on positive word of mouth referrals from past customers. Directly engaging customers will allow the business to establish credibility, gain useful feedback and improve their operations.

In the end, customer engagement matters because every customer interaction counts for small businesses. Better customer engagement will increase sales, service quality and the customer’s satisfaction. Every business should invest in employee training in order to improve the quality and level of customer engagement.