The key is to be part of people’s lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends.
– Marty Kohr
Nonversation? Heard that term before? In context with a social commerce business? Hope not. Simple definition: the opposite of a productive conversation.
Many nonversations transpire at elevators, bus stops, and the like. They also occur during business situations, in which participants do not really listen meaningfully to one another. Not what you want for a world-class social commerce business.
We define social commerce business as the use of social engagement to personalize and energize the shopping experience. It provides a social context to shopping and is both a channel and a way of doing business.
So how do we propose to build a world-class social commerce business? Here are 10 ways we recommend to our clients:
It starts with great employees
Employees are your service. Hire for their friendly, caring attitude and train for skills and knowledge. Empower them to be customer advocates.
Make social the centerpiece
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.
Share all great service stories
As soon as possible with all of your team. Celebrate the smallest of successes.
Show common courtesy
All the time. This leads to customer respect, which leads to conversation and the building of relationships and mutual trust.
Care for customers
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.
Analyze when things go right.
When a company receives a complaint people usually have discussions to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Next time you receive a letter of praise, meet to find out what went right and how it can be repeated.
All the time
Amazing companies don’t always deliver “Wow!” type experiences, they are just better than average – all of the time. All of the time is the secret sauce.
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.
Customer experience
One sure way to erode loyalty and social commerce is to deliver an inconsistent customer service experience. One time it’s great. The next time it is barely average. And, the next time it may be great again. Inconsistency creates uncertainty and erodes customer confidence and trust. Lack of confidence and trust leads to giving customers a reason to consider your competition.
Create a customer service culture
It starts by practicing what we call, “The Employee Golden Rule”: Treat your employees the way you want the customer treated – maybe even better.
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.
The bottom line
This is your time to create and take action on customer engagement insights from successful influencers. With good continuity and persistence, relevant insights will be helpful in developing lasting relationships with your customers.
Lead with initiative and own the moment. Dive in today and notice how much your business improvements grow.
Remember this simple fact. Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in. Let your content marketing success be your difference-maker.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
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 marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy 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.
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Be useful, entertaining, or you will be ignored. Do you have a focus on consumer engagement requirements?
Especially the ones that are essential for a social commerce business. Here we define a social commerce business as the use of social engagement to personalize and energize the shopping experience. It provides a social context to shopping and is both a channel and way of doing business.
What works best for customer engagement design in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
Want to know some Deadly Mistakes that Destroy Employee Engagement?
So how do we propose to build a world-class social commerce business with consumer engagement? Here are 12 customer engagement requirements we believe you must pay strict attention to:
Consider starting questions with this phrase: “I noticed that you …” What happens when you are forced to think about this is that you start to consider what you know about someone before you meet them 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.
Message relevance
People have many priorities and rarely enough time. So pay attention and don’t use it with irrelevant messages and conversation.
Engage them with only the messages and topics that are relevant to them. Strictly avoid broadcast messaging.
Customer engagement plan … 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.
Be credible
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.
Seek stories instead of answers
There are questions that lead to answers, and then there are questions that lead to stories. Here’s one way you might start a story seeking question, “What inspired you to …” When people share stories, they go beyond feeling like they are being interrogated.
They open up and they connect. The more stories you can hear, the more connection you’ll feel to everyone you speak to.
You must be human.
Consumer engagement … be human
People are human. It is as simple as that. They are real and want to be treated as such. They dislike being treated as a number.
And they prefer relationships that work best for them.
Friendly and social
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.
Customer engagement requirements … 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.
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
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.
Customer engagement examples … 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 with 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 this little boy 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.
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.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
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. Call today.
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 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. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer engagement from our library:
Whole Foods Customer Engagement Using Social Media
Is Employee Engagement the Backbone of the Publix Culture?
13 Employee Engagement Lessons From Best Employee Brands
Positive Attitude Is Everything for Customer Engagement
Like this short blog?Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.
