Today, Hootsuite held it’s summit on The Future Of Customer Engagement. Hootsuite is an online platform which allows companies to organise their digital content calendars. Not only can companies publish their content, they review analytics, use in-platform messaging services such as Messenger and review timelines at a quick glance. The summit was split into three distinct areas: Social Strategy, Social Best Practices and Succeeding with Hootsuite. In today’s blog, I’ve dived into the facts and figures and had a look at what these mean for our digital world and how we can use these insights to better our customer engagement.
Customers now not only want brands to know what their needs are, they want brands to anticipate what their needs are. People now have the power to access brands however they choose. 85% of people want a seamless blend of physical and digital interactions personalised to them. In this digital age, this is such an important figure. This means that context overrules channel. Obviously things like tone of voice are highly important as it means you are connecting to your audience in the appropriate manner. This is true of all customers, all generations. 88% of Gen Z are looking for this seamless blend targeted to them all the way to the 82% of the Silent Generation.
53% of customers believe that employees are a valuable way to learn about a company. Employee advocacy is the first place to start building a trusted community. Trust begins from within and if customers can see that the employees are happy with their company, they automatically see it as a brand they can trust. Customer engagement has been proven to increase when they see employees engaging positively with their company.
78% of people felt happier about their phone usage after using a digital wellbeing app. People are becoming more conscious about the time that they are spending online. This is for various reasons, whether they’ve missed out on real world events because they’ve spent too much time on social media or because of the recent data issues surrounding the digital community.
In Hootsuite and We Are Social’s 2019 digital report, they found that 42% of all internet users are concerned about data privacy. Customers are now being more proactive in how they use and share data online. This becomes really evident when 47% of 18-24 year olds have installed ad blocking software in the past year.
With the world becoming more digitally orientated, it is compressing the user journey from days to just hours. A customer needing to leave the house, drive a couple of miles, walk around a store for an hour, make a purchase and then go home. Now all that customer needs to do, is open their digital device, find the website and purchase.
If they want to look at reviews, they can do it all online. Did you know 73% of customers say a company who values their time is key to their user experience? Keep this fact in mind the next time you log into your website. Is your contact page easy to reach? Try looking for a particular product. How long did it take to you find?
The key way of building confidence and a connection with your audience is to try to be as broad as possible in your public reach and then tailor your 1:1 connection with your customers. Broad doesn’t mean targeting everyone and anyone. It means not getting too personal in your audience’s feed, however more and more customers are steering themselves away from neutral brands. Customers are looking for bold and meaningful brands. Customers are looking to engage with brands that do not remain neutral on topics important to them. Whether its advocating for equality or discussing climate change.
Penny Wilson summed up the current digital climate by explaining that social is the golden thread that is binding all the stages of the user journey together, and if a company is to get social right, they’ll be on the road to success to positive customer engagement.
Did you attend the summit? What were your key takeaways? Let us know by getting in touch with us on our social media profiles.
