Do you have a focus on these engagement marketing secrets to building relationships? Especially the ones that are essential for a social commerce business?

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

The key is to be part of people’s lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends.

– Marty Kohr

What do you feel is the most important factor in establishing customer relationships? How you make customers feel is the most important factor …hands down in our opinion.

Like making new friends. It is becoming the most important element of social commerce.

Related: Deadly Mistakes that Destroy Employee Engagement

Business is a people activity; people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Ones with whom they have relationships are at the top of the desirable business option list.

The stronger the relationships with your customers, the greater will be their trust and loyalty in your business. So it is very logical for businesses in establishing customer relationships.

Studies show time and again, your best, most loyal customers are the aptest to tell their friends about your business, creating strong word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth marketing is the most important element of any marketing campaign.

So how do we propose to build a world-class social commerce business with consumer engagement?

Here are 14 tips for your customer engagement strategy. They apply for one on one in person or online engagement. Note that following these tips will yield a good customer experience.

In most cases, you will have to go beyond this level to yield a great customer experience.

People are human

People are real; they are not numbers or statistics. It is as simple as that. They are human and want to be treated as such.

They dislike being treated as a number. And they prefer relationships that work best for them.

Be friendly and socialize your business. People do business with people, so make it personal. Customers should want to do business with you because of you and your employees. Make your customers ‘feel at home’.

You may have a great location, cool displays, great value, etc. That’s all great, but if your people can’t make your customers feel welcome and appreciated, all of the other doesn’t matter so much.

Engagement marketing … observe closely

Consider starting questions with this phrase: “I noticed that you …”. When you are forced to think about this, you start to consider what you know about someone.

You usually do this based on where you are, what they look like or what you know about them already. One of the best conversations I had at an event recently was because I noticed that someone was using two different phones at the same time.

Asking why led to an amazing conversation about time optimization and technology. Have you ever had a similar experience?

Relevance is vital

People have many priorities and rarely enough time. So pay attention and don’t use their time with irrelevant messages and conversation.

Engage them with only the messages and topics that are relevant to them. Strictly avoid broadcast messaging.

Engagement marketing examples … interrupt with questions

Many people think good listening means always letting someone finish every thought and nodding along. Instead, active listening requires that you ask questions while you are listening.

Sometimes this means interrupting – but this isn’t something to be afraid of. Often the interruptions will lead to tangents that create more intersections for both of the people in a conversation.

Build credibility and trust

The most important element that people rely on the most? It is trust, hands down in my opinion. Relationships breed trust so they are a good place to start.

People prefer to do business with people they know and have established relationships with. Those are the ones they trust the most.

Communication

People like to talk with and be around friendly people. In such situations, they share quite a bit about themselves.

And it obviously makes sense they expect the same in kind.

Engagement marketing strategy … customer care

Assume you are the company owner. Not all owners or executives make great leaders, but the ones that are should be emulated.

Watch how they take pride in how they deal with customers and employees, and then follow their lead.

All the time

Amazing companies don’t always deliver ‘Wow!’ type experiences, they are just a better than average all of the time.

Consistently all of the time is the secret sauce.

Experience trumps all

People are always looking for memorable experiences in their lives. They tend to remember both the very best and the very worse experiences. They prefer those they treasure and will share with friends.

Attention to details

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest impact. Figure out the details that your customers enjoy and make them a routine part of doing business with you.

Be vigilant … always listening and learning. Try and remember things customers tell you and then show them you listened.

Trying new ideas. Put your social commerce business in motion by being adaptable.

Here is a story that helps me think about better customer engagement:

When my son was about two and a half, he developed a funny habit of walking around the house from time to time, chiming out, “I’m here.”

Although he was strongly connected to his family and his small class of school friends, he still had that need to express it.

I’m here. I exist. I want to be seen, and heard. I want to be recognized.

And as human beings, we never quite lose that. We might get a little more sophisticated about how we say it, but ultimately we all want to let the world know:

I’m here.

If you intend to market something — to ask for someone’s hard-earned money and irreplaceable time — you must begin by seeing (and honoring) who they are. And clearly acknowledging their presence.

You need to know them as well as you know yourself, as well as you know your family and closest friends.

Key takeaway

Now it’s up to you.

Choose one customer service strategy to start with. Have a meeting around it. Discuss how to implement it. Then, do it and repeat the process, creating something good for your customers to talk about!

Soon you will have a much stronger social commerce business.

Please share a social commerce business experience with us. Any comments or questions to add below?

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer engagement and relationship-building performance and creativity.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of a business. Find him on G+, Twitte r, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

So what constitutes a great customer experience?

The quality of your company’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, your company’s customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your company’s customer experience is mediocre (and some would argue bad). If the customer feels good, your company’s customer experience is satisfactory, but it does not stand out. But if the customer feels delighted, your company’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. That is the only one that really matters to success. It is the one everyone is attempting to find the magic for.

Consider the invention cycle:

Imagination is envisioning things that do not exist.

Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge.

Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions.

Entrepreneurship is applying innovation, to bring unique ideas to fruition, inspiring others’ imagination.

This framework is relevant to start-ups and established firms, as well as innovators of all types where the realization of a new idea — whether a product, service, or work of art — results in a collective increase in imagination. An entrepreneurial spirit infects others, leading to wave upon wave of imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Let’s examine 10 smashing examples that Nordstrom uses to delight customers:

Customer care

Feelings and emotions certainly have a significant role in the way customers influenced in the marketing process. Some are saying that all customers are concerned about right now is price. I challenge that. It takes no special skill to follow the leader or be the (momentary) leader with the lowest price. Companies that are thriving (yes, thriving) do more. They have made deliberate decisions about how they would run their business, and they live out those decisions every day. The most important of those decisions is the one that determines that taking great care of their customers is the highest priority.

Nordstrom marketing strategy … hire nurturers

Hiring nurturers to take care of customers is the best place to start the process. You can identify this natural ability in employees during the interview process.

As much as there is a tendency to move customers quickly in and out your doors in the name of efficiency, resist this approach. Today’s customer wants and expects to be cared for as an individual. For example; on “Black Friday,” as customers were standing in cold lines to get into stores in the middle of the night, one intern at a local store decided to pass out coffee, hot chocolate, and doughnuts to keep the crowds calm. A great small touch that had remarkable long term results via word of mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

Related post: Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study

In Nordstrom’s salespeople can offer to ring up your purchase without you ever having to stand in line. A great small touch that had remarkable long term results via word of mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

Product presentation

Have you ever been in a Nordstrom store? If you have you will remember the emphasis of the visual presentation of their products. Draws your eyes to many, even if you are not looking for them. Helping customers visualize and sometimes try on the products.

Personalization

Customers don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued and understood. Their belief? That the money they spend with your company entitles them to such treatment. The differentiation of the experience your company delivers will therefore be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize your interactions with customers across all channels. That means knowing their name, their previously expressed preferences, or the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.

A Nordstrom salesperson rarely points. If you have a question about where something is located, they walk you there. The personal touch is remembered.

Care

Customers like knowing that you care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to companies and the top reason they recommend those companies to others. On the flipside, 80 percent of customers say that they have stopped doing business with a company because of a bad service experience. More often than not, they will never do business with such a company ever again. For these reasons and others, it is critical to ensure that your company delivers great service care. Care that results in great experiences that are remembered and talked about.

Separate checkout bays by department, unlike many other retail department stores that have central checkout bays that can feel like a cattle call.

You can’t over prepare on your customer experience if you want customers to select or stay with your company.

Empower employees

Be relentless about cutting out those rules that make your frontline folks have to bounce back and forth between themselves and a manager to take care of a customer or extend a special gesture they feel is warranted.

Take another page from Nordstrom’s that gets rid of the rule book for customers, or minimizes the rule book for employees, telling employees that the major rule they all live by is “No Customer Can Leave Unhappy.”

Differentiated value

This example, while being traditional, will surprise you in the best brand in this discrimination category. Ever shopped Nordstrom? Our favorite retail store because of its great, unique discriminators. Consider its high touch service, its spacious look and feel, and top quality products. One-to-one service. In most departments, if you indicate the desire to shop, there is a salesperson designated to helping you find sizes, etc. They are number 1 in our minds.

Get away from the desk

Be where your customers and the folks who serve your customers are.

Be agile, be on the lookout for what people are asking for, and then be responsive. If you do something for one customer in need, spread the idea through your employees to extend the gesture, too. Being responsive and empathetic and adjusting how you do business for your customers now will pay off as the memory of your kindness stays with them.

Let your customers know

Let the marketplace know about who you are and what you value in your decisions and actions. Be authentic at all costs.

More to know: 19 Top Marketing Initiatives We Should Be Discussing

When you make a decision, it results in action. And the accumulation of those decisions and actions becomes how people describe you and think of you. It becomes your story. So decide what story you want told about your company and your people. Your “storefront” is the accumulation of your decisions and actions.

So what story is emerging about who you are and what you value? Having customers who love you tell your story will make your business grow. Make decisions that will earn you the kind of story you want told. No wonder the only rule at Nordstrom to this day is “Use good judgment in all situations.”

The bottom line

Here’s the thing, social and customer experience isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Remember, don’t talk about how great you are. Tell your customers a story about what you do well will make them and feel awesome. Make customer experience the centerpiece of your marketing success strategy. Learn from Nordstrom’s, one of the best.

Do you have a customer service experience to share with this community?

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer focus better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.