In the world of digital communication, music sensation Taylor Swift has carved a unique and dynamic path to engage her fans.

With an impressive 128 million followers on Instagram and 88.7 million on Twitter, Swift uses these platforms to unmask the magic of her music career, unveil exclusive content and connect with fans in exciting live streams and engaging Q&A sessions. Her direct and authentic interaction has fortified her bond with her fans and allowed for instantaneous feedback that influences her creative process.

 Amidst an increasingly saturated entertainment industry, Swift stands as a beacon of adaptability and innovation. She seamlessly integrates her music and brand narratives across multiple platforms, from spellbinding music videos to enticing brand partnerships. This ensures her voice reaches a broader audience while maintaining her core values and unique identity.

Beyond the glitz and glamour of music, Swift’s journey holds a vital lesson for all industries: the golden key to success is prioritizing customer experience. Whether it’s through interactive digital platforms or transcendent experiences at concerts and events, Swift designs unforgettable moments that resonate and foster a deep sense of loyalty among her fans.

With the introduction of revolutionary tech like virtual and augmented reality, fans might one day find themselves in mesmerizing, fully immersive worlds where they have direct interactions with their favorite musician

However, with this digital reliance comes potential challenges, particularly with privacy. As data analytics become increasingly prevalent in marketing campaigns, concerns around user consent and data usage bubble up. It’s a balancing act to provide personalized experiences without breaching privacy boundaries.

Taylor Swift’s rise to mega-stardom really shows how powerful online platforms can be in breaking barriers and creating deep bonds with fans all over the world. She’s not just about selling music or filling up concert venues; her smart approach to connecting with her audience promises lasting success. She’s setting an example that goes beyond the music world, offering lessons for any business that cares about building strong relationships with its customers.

Customer engagement has become one of the most critical success factors for retailers looking to drive sales, loyalty, and overall business growth.

However, with the increasing complexity and diversity of today’s retail environment, engaging with customers has become a more challenging task.

The good news is that with the right strategies and processes in place, retailers can achieve higher levels of customer engagement and build stronger relationships. This article will provide you with ten effective ways to improve your retail customer engagement efforts.

1. Leverage Technology

In today’s digital age, customers want to engage with retailers through technology. By implementing the right technology, such as chatbots or AI-powered chat assistants, you can create a more personalized and convenient shopping experience for your customers. Technology can also help to reduce wait times, improve order accuracy, and make it easier for customers to communicate with your brand.

2. Focus on Personalization

One of the most effective ways to improve customer engagement is to provide a personalized experience. Use customer data to tailor your marketing messages, offer personalized recommendations, and create customized promotions and offers. By understanding your customers’ preferences and behavior, you can build stronger relationships and increase their loyalty to your brand.

3. Create a Loyalty Program

A loyalty program is an excellent way to increase customer engagement and drive repeat business. Offer rewards, discounts, and other incentives to customers who frequently shop with your brand. Hand out high-quality vinyl die cut stickers with offers to keep your customers coming back. A loyalty program creates a sense of community and makes customers feel valued and appreciated.

4. Offer Exceptional Customer Service

Nothing beats great customer service when it comes to building relationships with customers. Make sure your employees are trained to provide exceptional service and support, and empower them to solve customer issues quickly. Train your team members to listen actively and respond promptly to customer inquiries, complaints, and feedback.

5. Use Social Media to Engage with Customers

Social media is an excellent platform for retailers to connect and engage with customers. Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter X to share news and updates about your brand, offer promotions, and respond to customer comments and feedback. Social media can also help you to gain valuable insight into your customers’ behavior and preferences.

6. Participate in Community Events

Participating in local community events is an excellent way to engage with customers and build brand awareness. Host in-store events, sponsor local charity events, and participate in local trade shows or fairs. Engaging with your community creates goodwill and strengthens your brand’s reputation.

7. Create Interactive Displays

Creating interactive displays in your store is a great way to attract and engage customers. Use digital signage, touch screens, and other interactive displays to showcase product features and benefits, offer product demos, and provide educational information about your brand and products.

8. Build a Branded Mobile App

A branded mobile app gives you another touchpoint to engage with customers. Use your app to offer exclusive deals, send push notifications with relevant information, and create a rewards program. A branded app can also help you to gain valuable insights into your customers’ shopping behavior and preferences.

9. Use QR Codes and NFC

QR codes and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology are excellent ways to create a seamless and interactive experience for customers. Use a QR code to provide more information about products, offer exclusive deals, and drive customers to your website or social media channels. NFC technology can be used to offer contactless payment options and provide customers with a seamless shopping experience.

10. Offer User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is content created by customers that promotes your brand and products. Encourage customers to share their experiences, photos, and videos on social media or your website. UGC provides social proof and creates a sense of community surrounding your brand.

11. Participate in SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is a simple yet highly effective way to keep customers informed and engaged. Retailers can use SMS to send customers updates on sales, special promotions, or events. By maintaining regular contact with customers via text messages, retailers can cultivate a strong connection with their audience.

12. Use Augmented reality (AR) 

Augmented reality (AR) is another technology that is transforming customer engagement in retail settings. AR allows customers to visualize products in their desired contexts, which can facilitate informed purchasing decisions. For example, customers can preview furniture in their homes using AR-powered apps before making a purchase.

13. Utilize Feedback Effectively

To improve retail customer engagement, it is crucial to have a well-planned strategy for effective use of customer feedback. Gathering feedback through multiple channels like surveys, social media, or directly from customers during in-store visits can significantly improve the customer retention rate.

Analyze the feedback, both positive and negative, and identify patterns or trends. This will provide valuable insights into customer preferences and expectations. Use this information to make necessary adjustments to products, services, or store layouts. Recognize and appreciate the customers who provide valuable feedback. Engaging with them can lead to increased customer satisfaction and higher customer retention.

14. Hold Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are effective tools to enhance brand promotion and drive customer engagement. They can create excitement among customers and encourage them to interact with the brand more actively. Brands should ensure that contests are easy to participate in and the giveaway prizes are relevant to the target audience. This not only increases participation but also contributes to creating a positive brand image.

15. Promote Positive Customer Reviews

Positive customer reviews are essential for enhancing the brand image. They can not only attract new customers but also build trust among the existing clientele. To encourage customers to leave positive reviews, brands can offer incentives or loyalty rewards for those who share their feedback. Displaying these reviews on the store website and social media platforms can help in improving brand visibility and promoting brand experience.

Summing Up

The retail landscape has significantly changed, especially due to the impact of the recent pandemic. As retailers strive to adapt and thrive, innovative ideas and approaches are essential to engage customers and increase revenue. By effectively employing these strategies, retail businesses can develop a loyal following and enhance customer engagement.

About the Author

Ian Miller is Editor of Customer Service Manager Magazine – the leading resource and community for customer service professionals.

In today’s fiercely competitive business landscape, customer engagement plays a pivotal role in establishing enduring relationships with your target audience and fueling business growth.

Imagine a scenario where a coffee shop actively engages with its customers through personalized loyalty programs, social media interactions, and timely promotions. By offering exclusive rewards to loyal customers and promptly responding to their feedback, the coffee shop not only encourages repeat purchases but also fosters a sense of loyalty among its patrons.

These engaged customers, in turn, share their delightful experiences with friends and family, acting as brand ambassadors and attracting new customers to the coffee shop. Such customer engagement strategies not only drive customer retention but also result in positive word-of-mouth, leading to increased brand recognition and ultimately contributing to the coffee shop’s success in a fiercely competitive market.

To help you strengthen your customer engagement strategies and take your business to the next level, we have compiled a list of 10 creative and effective customer engagement ideas. From personalized experiences and interactive content to loyalty programs and social media campaigns, these customer engagement ideas are designed to captivate and delight your customers, fostering strong connections that lead to increased brand loyalty and ultimately, business success. So, let’s explore these customer engagement ideas and discover how they can help you boost your business to new heights.

1. Leverage Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are great tools for engaging with your customers. You can use these platforms to post updates about your products or services, share customer stories and testimonials, answer questions from followers, and even host contests or giveaways.

2. Create a Loyalty Program

Creating a loyalty program is a great way to reward your most loyal customers for their continued support of your business. This could be something as simple as offering discounts on future purchases or providing exclusive access to special events or promotions in exchange for points earned through purchases or other activities related to the brand.

3. Personalize Your Content

In today’s customer-centric landscape, personalizing content emerges as one of the most effective methods of engaging with customers. By customizing messages based on segmentation techniques, such as demographic data and past purchase history, businesses can demonstrate their value for customers as unique individuals rather than mere numbers on a sales sheet. This targeted approach resonates with each customer segment, fostering stronger connections and higher levels of engagement.

4. Offer Live Chat Support

Live chat support offers businesses, regardless of their size, an effective means of delivering personalized service in real-time without tying up employees on the phone all day. This dynamic support system caters to potential customers with questions about products or services, enhancing customer satisfaction. Moreover, live chat typically results in faster resolution times, as agents can multitask while providing quality assistance concurrently, improving overall customer experience.

5. Utilize Reviews & Testimonials

Leveraging reviews and testimonials from current customers can yield significant benefits when utilized effectively. These testimonials not only foster trust among potential buyers but also serve as powerful social proof, showcasing that others have had successful experiences with your business. This boost in credibility can substantially increase conversion rates. Thus, it is essential to capitalize on review sites such as Yelp! and Google+ Local to showcase these positive testimonials and build a robust reputation in the market.

6. Gamify Your Experience

Over recent years, gamification has gained increasing popularity due to its dual capability of engaging users while delivering educational value. By incorporating fun elements such as quizzes, leaderboards, and badges into your website experience, you can captivate consumers while providing insights into what sets your product or service apart from competitors. This interactive approach not only entertains users but also imparts valuable information, making it an effective strategy to enhance user engagement and promote brand differentiation.

7. Send Out Surveys & Polls

Surveys provide businesses with a valuable opportunity to gain insights into their current customer base’s satisfaction levels, identify areas for improvement, and understand what new features or services customers may desire. Additionally, surveys are quick and easy to set up, making them a crucial step when strategizing engagement initiatives. By gathering feedback directly from customers, businesses can make data-driven decisions to enhance their offerings and improve overall customer experience. Don’t overlook the significance of incorporating surveys into your engagement strategy for valuable customer feedback and actionable insights.

8. Host Events & Webinars

Events provide people with an opportunity to come together in a physical space to discuss common interests and related topics. These events could include seminars, workshops, and local meetups, where attendees have the chance to network with peers and industry experts. If hosting physical events is not feasible, consider hosting webinars instead. Webinars allow attendees to learn something new and interact directly with the presenter, asking questions in real-time. Webinars offer the convenience of attending from any location while still providing valuable educational experiences and fostering engagement with the audience.

9. Make Use Of User Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) refers to content created and posted by users online, usually on social media platforms. This type of material is often much more relatable and engaging than traditional advertisements because people feel a connection between their shared experiences and the featured UGC posts. By incorporating UGC into marketing efforts, businesses can reach a larger audience and attract potential leads who might not have been exposed to the brand otherwise. UGC serves as authentic and genuine testimonials from real customers, which can build trust and credibility for the brand. It also encourages user participation and fosters a sense of community around the brand.

10. Focus On Delivering Quality Customer Service

Quality customer service is key to ensuring high satisfaction and retention rates. When you know how to treat clients right, chances are good that they will come back for future purchases again and again. Make sure your employees are well-trained and understand the importance of treating each client respectfully. Go the extra mile to ensure that problems are solved quickly and efficiently, leaving everyone happy with the end result. By prioritizing exceptional customer service, you can build strong customer loyalty and create a positive reputation for your business.

Implementing these customer engagement ideas can help you build a loyal customer base and foster lasting relationships with your audience. By personalizing content, leveraging social media, and offering excellent customer service, your business can maximize its reach and create a positive brand experience that keeps customers coming back for more. Remember, the key to successful customer engagement is to create meaningful connections with your audience and provide value at every touchpoint.

When problems occur, support teams often bear the brunt of customer frustrations; and during times of upheaval, this only increases. As crucial advocates for your business, how do you create an environment where agents feel empowered to do their best work?

It’s not always easy being on the front line of customer service.

Even with the most satisfied customer base, mistakes can happen and issues arise. As a result, customer service agents need to be prepared for rough waters as well as smooth sailing and know how to navigate customer complaints with a ‘can do’ and positive attitude.

Productivity can plummet if the problems start to pile up though. Try putting yourself in an agent’s shoes, and imagine that complex issues and dissatisfied customers were awaiting you at every turn, each time you answered the phone or received an email. How would you feel?

You probably wouldn’t be all that keen to come into work every day. Luckily, the reverse can also be true. If the majority of an agent’s day is spent having efficient and productive conversations, where they can problem-solve for customers, then they will naturally experience higher levels of satisfaction and fulfillment, and pass this sense of positivity on to the next customer they speak to.

The undeniable link between happy agents and happy customers

To unpack this point, a recent Glassdoor Economic Research study found that, “Across all companies and years, customer and employee satisfaction are positively linked,” with the relationship between the two not only increasing motivation internally, but impacting commercial results positively as well.

A reason for this is because happy customers are far more likely to recommend your product or service to their networks. And with referrals being “the most credible form of advertising,”—83% of consumers say they act on the advice of their friends and family—a happy customer can be an invaluable acquisition tool. For some reason, many brands haven’t grasped this concept yet, though.

When it comes to the role satisfied customers play in profit-building, one could argue that it all starts with the individual agent. Especially given the growing role online transactions play in our shopping habits these days. It’s then very possible that the only human-to-human interaction a customer might have with a brand is when they reach out to customer service. In these instances, the agent becomes the ‘face’ of the brand and has the power to shape a customer’s entire perception of the company.

Additionally, according to Harvard Business Review: “There is a strong statistical link between employee well-being reported on Glassdoor and customer satisfaction among a large sample of some of the largest companies today. A happier workforce is clearly associated with companies’ ability to deliver better customer satisfaction—particularly in industries with the closest contact between workers and customers, including retail, tourism, restaurants, health care, and financial services.”

In fact, keeping your sales team happy can boost sales by up to 37%. What’s more, employee satisfaction adds value to your organisation—landing a place on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies To Work For list can grow stock prices by 14%.

Indeed, there’s little doubt that happy agents do make happy customers, and together this contributes to a healthier bottom line. But how do you foster happiness at work? How can businesses ensure customer service teams are ‘happy’?

Give agents the right tools they need to do the job without unnecessary stress

Your customers are omnichannel—they research, browse, and buy on a variety of platforms—which means your customer service agents need to be omnichannel too.

Investing in omnichannel customer service software is one way to give agents the tools they need to be where the customer is, when the customer needs them. Whether that’s replying to a Facebook message, following up on an email, speaking on the phone or sending a quick text via WhatsApp.

Not only does this quite clearly improve the speed and seamlessness of the customer experience, but it also helps mix up the agents’ working day. Sitting on the other end of a continuously ringing telephone—or worse, waiting quietly for a call to come through—can be monotonous and demotivating for the best of us.

Combat this by keeping your agents active and engaged with a full offering of communication channels at their disposal.

However, this only works if all of your channels are synched up and working together too. You need to have the software in place to better integrate sales and CRM data with customer service history, enhancing both the customer and agent experience.

78% of customers get frustrated if they have to repeat themselves to service agents — and who can blame them?

Service agents know a lot about customer experience, empower them to enable change

It’s almost unavoidable that customer service agents will have to bear the brunt of customer frustrations. However, witnessing consumer pain-points first-hand puts agents in a unique (and powerful) position to improve the customer service experience.

Your customer service agents are the ones out there, day after day, responding to positive and negative consumer input alike. It’s their job to resolve issues as quickly as possible, and, crucially, represent your business in the most positive light.

For agents to be the best advocates for your product or service, they need to feel capable and ready to act on what they see quickly and autonomously. This may be as simple as being able to deal with a customer complaint without having to bring their team manager in. Or it may be as radical as becoming a ‘citizen developer’ — making use of low code software development to proactively prototype and build better customer service solutions.

A citizen developer refers to any employee who can develop a business-led solution using a no-code or low-code platform developed by IT experts themselves. Citizen developers drag and drop code snippets into place without programming knowledge, digitizing processes, and streamlining workflows. Therefore, a citizen developer spends more time thinking of strategic business solutions and performing critical tasks.

When customer service agents become citizen developers, they don’t have to submit tickets to the IT department because they can manage IT problems on their own. They can quickly access data and create solutions to benefit their customers. Therefore, they feel empowered, demonstrating confidence in performing their roles and duties.

Within the organisation, leaders should also strive to create a culture of autonomy and trust by reaching out to customer agents for valuable insights. By doing so, you can learn a great deal about the real customer service experience, and increase employee motivation at the same time.

Using intrinsic rewards and recognition to organically motivate agents

Hard work deserves reward. But reward and recognition is about much more than a cash bonus for meeting a service target.

While there will always be a place for extrinsic rewards like this, customer service managers should look to more intrinsic ways of rewarding and motivating their agents too.

Customer service agents must feel valued by providing them with a comfortable, safe, and less stressful work environment to boost employee satisfaction and happiness. For instance, customer service agents can work more comfortably when they sit on ergonomic chairs and use problem-free computers. In addition, managers must also ensure agents take breaks and lunches on time and have access to health and wellness programs and facilities.

Increased responsibility, as well as personal development within the role, will help keep agents happy and motivated at work. Intrinsic reward comes from within—from the feeling of a job well done combined with a greater sense of purpose—so leaders should always ensure that agents know how important their job really is.

Leaders can accomplish this goal through regular coaching and training. It’s crucial to assess the customer agents’ metrics and feedback about their job roles. Because they’re frontliners speaking with different types of customers, they may also experience burnout. Coaching and training sessions serve as a break time or refresher to keep them on track.

Additionally, agents are a wealth of knowledge for any business as they are on the front lines and closest to the customers. Some of the best suggestions for improvements to products, processes and more come from happy, motivated agents.

To put it bluntly: your business doesn’t just need a great customer service team, it relies upon it.

So, make sure agents feel seen, heard and valued — broadcast their achievements, recognise hard work, respond to the changes they’d like to see, and give them the tools they need to delight customers across multiple channels every single day.

Channel options are growing, and the entire consumer engagement environment is becoming complex.

While the shift in engagement preferences is happening across generations, it’s being led by Millennials, who are demanding and omnichannel. Delivering exceptional customer experiences to them has fast become a top priority for businesses and 2019 will be no different. The question then becomes – how can businesses continue to provide service experiences that are unified, consistent and compelling?

We recommend three key approaches to get there:

1. Unified Customer Experience

Every year a new channel is added and the systems are not necessarily able to cope with the integration of communication across these different channels, thus leading to silos between marketing, sales and support, and creating operational inefficiencies. While companies are working towards structuring their systems to gain a single view of the consumer, they miss a key point: how to provide a single view of the brand to the consumer.

The objective is to combine the inside-out view of the customer relationship that many companies have effectively embedded (what the brand knows) with a more outside-in perspective (what the customer is thinking, doing and saying). This is a true actionable 360-degree customer-centric view.

2. Better Omnichannel Engagement

With the rise of multi-channel and multi-device interactions, an omni-channel strategy is a growing tactic that every business should consider adopting. But with the onset of digital transformation, this has only gotten harder. As customers switch between digital channels, they expect an experience that’s continuous and consistent. The goal is to ensure every customer interaction is optimised, personalised and, above all, delightful with all channels drawing on the same knowledge base and customer profiles. This means:

• making each interaction painless and productive for both the customer and the advisor
• letting customers interact with you when, where, and how they want
  connecting the dots of each interaction to understand the journey across channels
• directing customers toward a destination using insight-producing analytics

3. Proactive Support

As new channels emerge, customers expect that the servicing brand will provide proactive information through all channels of communication, eliminating the need for them to reach the brand and initiate a contact. For example, in the case of flight delays, the airline can provide status updates through apps, social-media pages, website, voice call, etc.

Proactive service relies on customer context, channel, and device information and predictive intelligence frameworks to manage communications. Being proactive is not just limited to the servicing part of the business, but can also be a huge success in sales scenarios, by proactively reaching out to consumers when they are looking at information on the website and offering services through live chat or chatbots.

If you’re reading this, there must be a lot of questions on your mind – how to cover every single customer interaction? What is the best approach to improving customer experience in a customer-focused organization? More importantly – how to build a CX strategy that propels your current and future customer experience success?

Our webinar in partnership with Forrester can get you all these answers and several more straight from the experts – register your interest here!

About the Author

Nanditha Vijayaraghavan, Segment Marketer | Content Creator | CX Empath.

Priya Iyer, Chairman & CEO at Vee24 explains why Live Engagement could be the answer for online retailers looking to differentiate themselves in a very crowded marketplace.

It’s November. Christmas is around the corner and shoppers are getting ready both on the high street and online. In 2017, Ecommerce was responsible for around $2.3 trillion in global sales and is expected to hit $4.5 trillion by 2021.

Consumers are inundated with options of where to buy from and it’s more important than ever to differentiate your brand. With that being said, it’s not too late to offer Live Customer Engagement for a competitive advantage this season.

Take cameras for example. Have you ever tried to research and buy one, have all your questions answered using the content you can find on the website, and leave the site happy that you’ve found the best product for your budget?

There are dozens of brands across multiple websites at every price to suit your budget. It could take hours to research them all, check features, read reviews and decide based on what you can read; and 88% of shoppers will do exactly this – researching online before making a purchase¹. The options are overwhelming and sometimes you just want to ask a couple of questions before making that decision.

Live Engagement could be the answer for online retailers looking to differentiate themselves in a very crowded marketplace. A platform where online shoppers can ask quick questions, receive timely answers and move quickly to making a buying decision.

Back to the camera. You’ve read the reviews and you’re happy with the price. But you need a little more information. Is the battery rechargeable? What’s the warranty? Live Engagement allows you to chat with an online product specialist without the need to phone the company and get routed through a call centre. Live chat response times are typically faster than calling a call centre – at an average 23 seconds to get a response.

Calls can start with a sophisticated ChatBOT, move to a text chat conversation with an agent, and then move seamlessly into a video chat call, where you can see the agent and even see the product close up. Not only that, but you could bring a friend into the same online conversion to help make a decision or ask the agent to find an available camera expert if the questions get too specific.

48% of customers are more likely to return to a website with Live Engagement, so it’s no longer a nice feature on the website, but it’s an essential part of business strategy for retailers globally. Agents are trained to deal efficiently with calls, help customers navigate the website, assist them with form filling and check out, and to upsell products that the customer would have missed without the agent’s guidance.

Live Customer Engagement technology is also a perfect tool for customers who have issues with an existing product. Instead of visiting the closest store or calling their help desk, customers can immediately engage with an online agent. And with video chat and mobile camera capabilities, the agent can look at the product and help troubleshoot, removing the need to ship the item back for repair or try to explain the problems over the phone.

With 3.95 billion Internet users in the world as of June 2018, and millions of Ecommerce sites, there’s no shortage of choice for online shoppers. Most shoppers’ pathways will be broadly similar – decide what they need, research options online and find a suitable site that has the right product at the right price. The fact is that they can find any number of these quite easily, so how does a retailer differentiate? Live Engagement offers a different type of online shopping experience – one where the customer’s needs come first and there’s somebody there to answer questions, find products, offer expert advice and deal personally with complaints.

This time of year is critical to retailers – and the perfect time to show what makes you different. Live Engagement should be top of your shopping list this coming year.

About the Author

Priya Iyer is Chairman & CEO at Vee24. With over 25 years of diverse international experience in nearly every facet of software, Priya is a proven, high-growth entrepreneurial CEO with a leadership philosophy centered on engaging clients and employees to build industry leading SaaS software platforms and delivering exceptional stakeholder value to achieve sustainable competitive differentiation.

Demonstrated success in developing and scaling a strong entrepreneurial and innovative culture, attracting and retaining top talent, cultivating a sense of ownership throughout the organization, and leading successful teams. Priya was awarded New England Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and ranked on the 2015 top 100 Entrepreneur list by the Boston Globe.

Prior to Vee24, Priya was most recently Chairman & CEO of Anaqua, Inc. which she founded in October 2004 and grew into a global SaaS solutions provider for Intellectual Asset Management. Prior to Anaqua, Priya headed Operations at Steelpoint Technologies, a legal software provider for Fortune 500 companies and global law firms, where she drove the company from the red to profitable quarter-after-quarter growth. Prior to Steelpoint, Priya was Managing Partner at AGENCY.COM where she founded and grew a financial services practice to $250 million in less than 5 years. Priya has also held senior positions at Bell Labs and Foxboro Systems.

Priya holds a bachelors and masters in Computer Science and an MBA from the Sloan Fellows program at MIT Sloan School of Management. She serves on several boards, women executive panels, and is a regular guest speaker at various business schools in the Greater Boston area.

1. “Great to meet you” or “great to hear from you”

If you do not recognize the person as a regular customer, starting the conversation on a positive note will set the tone of the entire customer interaction.

2. “Hi, have you been here before?”

According to Michael Gerber in his book, The E-myth, companies that have changed from, “Can I help you?” to “Hi, have you been here before?” have seen an increase in sales of 16%. Although the author doesn’t offer an explanation as to why this might be, it’s certainly worth a try!

3. “Welcome to ______ Customer Service. My name is _______. How can I help you?”

This opening phrase is widely used in call centers. By introducing yourself and your company at the beginning of the call the aim is to gain the trust of your customers.

4. “Are you enjoying your morning/afternoon?”

This is in the small talk category and a great way to get customers to open up. Be ready for negative as well as positive answers and react appropriately.

5. “Welcome back! How’ve you been?”

This greeting works well for customers you’re familiar with. You can go on to ask how he or she liked the product they purchased and if they are buying another.

6. Offer a Sincere Compliment

One of the most difficult greetings, but when given sincerely a compliment can really engage your customer. Make it relevant or specific to your business, such as “That’s a nice necklace” if you work in a Jewelry store.

7. “Hi, my name’s ______, what’s yours?”

This greeting works best in a casual business environment, but when you get it right it works perfectly. Most customers are friendly and like to meet new people and by introducing yourself you are showing willingness to be open and helpful.

8. “How’s the weather?”

This is a surprisingly good icebreaker and a good way to get talking with the customer. Just make sure you are fully engaged in the conversation and interested in what she or he has got to say.

9. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you”

Not strictly a greeting, but an essential part of the customer conversation. It’s your way of saying that you’re happy to help and that you would be pleased to see the customer again.

10. Create your own unique, memorable greeting

Put trust in your team by encouraging them to use their own customer service greetings. By experimenting, they’ll come across as natural – and you’ll find out what works and what doesn’t.

A customer service greeting should flow like a normal conversation. If you are greeting a customer face to face, remember to always follow social guidelines such as respecting personal space and volume of voice.

About the Author

Ian Miller is editor of CSM, the magazine and community for customer service professionals.

Have you ever noticed feeling compelled to do something for those who have helped you—even if they haven’t asked you to?

That’s the Law of Reciprocity at work.

This law says whatever you give, whether it’s money, time or effort—it comes back to you with a tenfold return.

I know for a fact this law works as we’ve experienced it many times over the years. Almost like clockwork, we notice a distinct increase in leads that come in after making a donation or doing something extra for a client.

How Relationship Marketing Incorporates the Law of Reciprocity

Some businesses lead with hard-selling tactics to drive you to buy. This is called “push marketing”. But others, using “inbound or relationship marketing” strategies, have discovered how to put the power of generosity to work in their business.

How do you think your business would change if, instead of taking you focused on giving? Once you shift your focus to serving others and creating value—it changes everything.

Over time, your generosity creates a reputation that sets you apart and your rate of referrals will increase as well.

So how would you like to have not only more clients but more loyal ones too?

Here are ten ways to be more generous in your business to achieve that:

1) Be a Great Resource. If anyone needs a referral, share vendor referrals of those you know and trust. People will see you as the “go-to” person and come to you for recommendations.

2) Give More Than Expected. Doesn’t it feel nice when you walk into a hotel room and there’s a mint on your pillow? It’s an unexpected surprise. Provide more value than what you charge. Go the extra mile. Give a surprise gift. Deliver your product or service faster than promised.

3) Provide Excellence. Since your business needs to differentiate itself from your competitors, how about making it your mission to only offer top-quality products and services? Respond to all email and phone messages promptly. Give clients uninterrupted attention. Listening to and addressing concerns are some ways to do this.

4) Serve Others. Zig Ziglar once said “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” And Mary Kay’s empire was built on the premise of achieving success by helping someone else succeed. Many entrepreneurs are in business because they are on a mission to serve others in some capacity. When you live your purpose, you’ll live a life of joy while making a difference.

5) Open Yourself to Receiving. Most of us were never taught how to receive. For instance, how do you typically respond when someone complements you? Do you push back and try to minimize their sincerity? The same thing applies to your business—If you say “no” when clients, money or opportunities come your way, those opportunities will stop coming.

6) Listen to Your Inner Voice. Inner wisdom leads us to those who need our help. Stop, listen and take action on those nudges. Offer your attention, time, and advice in their hour of need.

7) Follow The Golden Rule. I grew up with this rule ingrained into my psyche. Essentially, treat others the way you wish to be treated—and that includes in business too. When a company treats you right or sells you a terrific product, you feel happy. You feel loyal. You’re likely to buy more from that company. You’re likely to recommend that company’s products and services to friends, family and colleagues. Make it your goal is to have the same thing be done for you.

8) Perform Acts of Kindness. Lift up others. Empower others through a simple word of encouragement and inspiration. Share your vision of what you see is possible for them.

9) Be Genuine. Share yourself openly with those in your network. Let them see the real you. Build warm relationships with people around you. Make them feel special.

10) Practice Gratitude. When your heart is full of gratitude and you put forth effort to show your gratitude, really great things can happen. Make it a practice every day to share gratitude. Who has shared a referral? Who taught you something? Who is your favourite new customer and why? What vendor did a great job on a project? Show thanks for someone or something today and watch what happens.

Be Generous and Watch Your Business Grow

There are many other ways you can practice kindness and will see returns tenfold. Go volunteer, be a sponsor, donate funds to a worthy charity or even invest in a business that you believe in! Remember as a business person we can serve with compassion, kindness, patience and respect. Being a good person not only makes you feel happier but it is also great for business.

Make it your mission to make someone’s day brighter every single day!

About the Author

Susan Friesen is the founder of eVision Media, a boutique web development and Digital Marketing firm of over 15 years that specializes in designing, building and marketing professional, unique websites for entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a moving target of definitions and associations. Even full time professional industry watchers have to update their standard definitions to reflect the evolution of a market that Gartner forecasts will be worth $36.7 billion in 2017.

If you think of CRM as being like a whole marketplace such as cars or fashion, it becomes easier to appreciate that it’s going to come in different shapes and sizes. Some versions are suited to the complexities of a business unit within a global enterprise, while others fit the simpler needs of an SME. Some aim to provide a balanced portfolio of functionality across sales, marketing and service, while others remain firmly rooted in the sales discipline.

However what binds all the different flavours of CRM is that the solution provides organisations with a common system of recording what is known about their customers. This might begin with capturing the initial set of interactions required to become a customer. After all, tracking sales pipelines is what CRM is probably most famous for. Then over time, it might expand to include all ongoing engagement and transactions. These might be automatically imported into the CRM to provide a single view of the customer.

As the volume and quality of customer data grows, organisations naturally become interested in the broader insights that can be generated. Common and distinct customer behaviours can be identified through analysis. This leads to fresh insight into customer needs and opportunities for relevant customer messaging.

Indeed we are now entering a new phase of automated insight as promised by artificial intelligence (AI) which is fuelling deep learning solutions. These will continuously trawl through the increasingly large datasets now captured in CRM to surface ‘next best actions’ for sales team or customers with ‘ideal’ profiles for personalised marketing.

So how do contact centres benefit from smarter CRM?

First and foremost CRM can help customers reach the best resource to deal with their query. Whenever the customers’ chosen form of contact is recognised from their existing record, a set of business rules can be triggered at the initial point of interaction.

Beyond the undoubted convenience of automatically opening the right customer record on the advisor’s screen, there are smarter things that can be done to enhance the customer experience including:

• The lifetime value of a customer is used to offer different levels of service. Customers can be prioritised during busy times as a result
• Certain situations such as outstanding payments or immanent renewals can be routed to specialist teams
• Consistently low scoring net promoter score (NPS) customers are routed to another team focussed on understanding why their customer satisfaction scores are low
• Customers are offered a ‘random act of kindness’ to acknowledge their loyalty based on how long they have been active customers

Once CRM has been used for this initial routing, it often continues to play a core role until the customer enquiry is resolved. For instance, in today’s world of customer journeys, many organisations use their CRM to standardise key stages and specific tasks in order to deliver a consistent level of service. CRM solutions that offer strong workflow and journey design capabilities are best suited for this purpose.

CRM can also be used for case management. This is useful when enquiries are complex or spread over time and all relevant information and interactions need to be grouped together and easily retrieved.

Voice analytics

Most CRM systems also offer great flexibility in terms of customisation. Both the core customer record and management reports can be tweaked to suit most data capture and analytical goals. For instance, voice of the customer data can either be housed directly in the CRM or dynamically connected if a dedicated solution is preferred. Some even allow automated capture of voice interactions into the customer record as ‘raw’ material for voice of the customer analytics. This can transform how individual customer interactions are approached. Or indeed how certain customer journeys or products are improved.

Of course simply capturing more and more customer data does not deliver value for either brand or customer. Closed loop decision making based on actionable insight has to guide all data gathering.

To state the obvious, if the data can be economically captured and used for the mutual benefit of both customer and brand then it is worth doing.

In summary, CRM provides the customer data, workflow and analytics that fine tunes contact centre engagement into relevant, effective and profitable dialogue. Great CRM and contact centre infrastructure go together and where better to integrate the two, than in the cloud?

A white paper entitled ‘How to Succeed in Delivering Proactive Customer Service’ is available to download from the Intelecom website.

About the Author

Colin Hay, VP Sales, Intelecom UK , is an experienced senior executive with a background in software, media and mobile communications. Following a distinguished eleven year career in the British Army, Colin completed an MBA. He has worked for mobile giants Motorola, 02 and Three and is an Associate Fellow at Warwick Business School.

Intelecom is a leading provider of cloud-based contact centre solutions. With approaching two decades of experience, Intelecom was one of the first to develop a cloud-based contact centre. Highly flexible and scalable, Intelecom can be adapted to accommodate one to several thousand concurrent agents using any device, in any location and integrates with multiple applications seamlessly.

My wife knows that I love pesto sauce. There is a restaurant in our area that has a delicious meal with pesto. However, their pesto is a creamy pesto sauce. We found out they make regular sauce and just add the cream to it before mixing it into the dish. So, one day my wife asks if they can leave out the cream. Their response, “Absolutely. Happy to do it.”

So, we’ve been ordering lunch from them, probably once or twice a month, for over a year. They have always been accommodating. Until today. When my wife placed the order for the pesto without cream, she heard those ugly four words: “We can’t do that.”

My wife’s response was, “We order it this way all of the time.” After putting her on hold for several minutes, the employee came back on and said, that they would do it. A happy ending, but still a flawed service experience.

What happened was that this was a fairly new employee. She had been trained to take an order, but not to be flexible and consider accommodating special requests.

What should have happened instead? Other than more training about the menu items, at least train the employee on how to respond when he or she doesn’t know what to do. Don’t just assume the answer is no and tell the customer, “We can’t do that.” Instead, ask the customer to hold a moment. Ask someone else, in this instance the manager or even the chef, and come back on and say, “Happy to do it. By the way, thanks for your patience. I’m fairly new and still learning.”

And, that is for the first time that the request is made. From that point forward, the employee now knows they can make pesto sauce without the cream. She (or he) should never have to put a customer on hold and ask that question again.

The lesson is simple: Teach employees to avoid the dreaded phrase, “We can’t (or won’t) do that.” And if an employee truly can’t do something, teach him or her how to properly break the news to the customer. There aren’t that many reasons to say “no” to a customer. You can be out of an item. It’s something you don’t do. It can be illegal, and you don’t want to break the law. Or, it can even be an unreasonable request that can’t be met.

Regardless of the reason, there are many things you can say instead of, “We can’t do that.” Imagine we asked for pesto sauce, with or without the cream, and the restaurant happened to be out of it – or never even had it on the menu at all. Rather than, “We can’t or won’t do that,” the employee could say, “We’re out of pesto sauce. I’m sorry about that, but you may love our marinara or meat sauce. Would you like to try that today?”

Now doesn’t that sound a lot better than, “We can’t do that”?

About the Author

Shep Hyken is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. As a professional speaker and best-selling author, Shep helps companies develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees.