What is Digital Customer Engagement? A Beginner Guide with Examples

Are you ready to take your customer engagement to the next level? 🚀

As businesses compete for online attention, it’s important to understand the importance of digital customer engagement.

With social media interactions and personalized email campaigns, you can engage your customers in a way they have never experienced before. 

But where do you start? Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. 

📕 In this beginner’s guide, learn how to build lasting customer relationships by uncovering the secrets of digital customer engagement and using real-world examples. 

Get ready to transform your business and dominate your competition! 🏆 

What is Digital Customer Engagement?

Digital Customer Engagement is the exchange of information and correspondence between a company and its clients via websites, email ✉️, social media 📱, and other online platforms. It involves connecting with customers (and prospective buyers) and, more importantly, building brand loyalty. Getting loyal customers and improving brand loyalty long-term is the goal.

Digital customer engagement is all the ways a customer interacts with your business via technology and how you interact with them. 

For instance, consider all of your customers’ digital interactions with your brand, including email, social media, and even your website. Customers’ experiences work together to build (or damage) your relationship with them. 🤝

Here are some specific examples of how you and your brand might engage with your customers:

• A chatbot that uses AI to answer customers’ questions on your website.
• A customer care professional responding to a question on social media.
• On your website or YouTube channel, customers watch tutorials or introductory videos.
• A community forum where customers interact with a company representative and with each other.
• You send an email to your customer list, and they click on a link to learn more about your product or service.

Why is Digital Engagement Important? 🤔

Digital engagement is important because it helps businesses build customer relationships and brand loyalty. A digital customer engagement strategy involves how a customer interacts with a business and how the business interacts with the customer via technology.

Here are some of the importance of digital engagement: 

1. Challenges with handling volume: As customer interactions via digital channels increase, businesses face difficulty managing them effectively. As a result, customer inquiries and support can be delayed, negatively impacting customer experience and reputation.
2. Competitive engagement landscape: As businesses compete in the digital landscape, they must provide quality products/services and engage their customers effectively. More digital engagement options may help competitors gain a competitive edge and attract more customers.

3. Aligning digital strategies with business goals: Businesses must align their digital engagement strategies with their broader business objectives. An effective digital engagement strategy should consider factors such as the target audience, industry trends, and the resources available to the business.

How do I increase Digital Customer Engagement? 🙋‍♀️

To increase digital customer engagement, you can consider the following strategies:

1. Determine your Business Goals

A successful digital strategy starts with identifying your business goals, which depend on the following:

• Why do you want to build a brand?
• What marketing tools do you use?
• Your brand’s weaknesses
• Once you spell them out, research data can prove your progress toward your goals.

2. Decide which Digital Channels you’ll use

Depending on their strengths, you must have a clear, well-defined strategy for each digital channel you use.

• Webinars: interact with customers and get feedback
• Live Chat & Messaging: Respond to customer questions about your products using live chat and messaging
• Email Marketing: Make your customer’s inbox a place of engagement
• Social Media Marketing: Showcase your brand values and engage your audience
• Animation Apps: Try using apps for animation to capture your audience’s attention
• SEO: Provide content related to the search for potential customers. 

3. Use a Customer Relationship Management(CRM) Platform

CRM allows you to securely track and analyze customer behavior through a digital platform:

• The purchases made
• Preferences for contact
• Your brand’s interactions

Using a CRM, you can customize your customer service and gain valuable insights into how your engagement strategy impacts customer satisfaction.

Look for the following features in a CRM to ensure you reap all the benefits of using one:

• Engage your audience across all your digital channels with omnichannel capabilities
• Customer assistance is directed to the right place by intelligent routing
• Using automation tools 📈 increases employee productivity, efficiency, and job satisfaction
• In order to track job performance and identify training requirements, workforce management tools are available
• Resources for training enable employees to master essential skills quickly
• Reports and analytics 📊 identify weaknesses in your engagement strategy

4. Develop a Digital Engagement Strategy

Creating a workable strategy begins with defining clear, actionable objectives and tracking KPIs along the way.

You should align your objectives with what the customer expects:

• User-friendly tools and clear information
• Engaging your customers with special incentives
• Customer support and content tailored to their needs

5. Create a Personalized Digital Engagement Experience for Customers

You can personalize every digital interaction with your customers by:

• Your brand’s first contact with the customer
• The first purchase process – everything that occurs prior to payment
• In the post-purchase phase, obtain feedback on the entire process and gauge satisfaction
• Post-purchase and regular check-ins to maintain a positive working relationship
• Make sure you follow up with your customers to encourage them to stay engaged with your brand

What are the three tiers of Digital Customer Engagement? 

The major 3 tiers of Digital Customer Engagement are Awareness, Interaction, and Retention, which are explained below: 

1. Awareness

In the first tier, Awareness, a brand, and its products are introduced across various digital channels. As part of this process, potential customers are guided from their first interaction with the brand to making a purchase. Digital platforms like social media, email, and mobile notifications are used within this tier to create lasting impressions.

2. Interaction

During the Interaction tier, customers are engaged on a more personal level. The customer experience can be enhanced through tailored communication and the use of sales engagement platforms. Personalized digital marketing drives customer satisfaction and loyalty. Turning one-time buyers into repeat customers is key to this tier.

3. Retention

Through continuous digital engagement strategies, retention aims to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction. Businesses 💼 strive to strengthen customer relationships by providing personalized experiences. Creating a community around the brand goes beyond individual transactions. By fostering positive word-of-mouth and ongoing digital interactions, the goal is to retain existing customers and foster advocacy.

5 Best Digital Customer Engagement Platforms in 2024

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is a CRM and customer engagement solution that has been around for many years. Companies of all sizes use HubSpot to engage with existing customers, automate marketing funnels, and convert prospects into customers.

HubSpot offers features for marketing, sales, customer service, content management, and operations.

Besides CRM functionality, HubSpot Marketing Hubs offers tools for marketing automation and lead generation.

By using HubSpot integration with KrispCall, you will be able to gather all your customer information in one place. With HubSpot CRM, your agents can spend more time talking with customers and prospects. Here’s what the integration with KrispCall looks like:

Many customer engagement tools offer free basic packages or at least free trials. Take advantage of them! By conducting these tests, your IT department can identify compatibility and connectivity issues with existing business tools.

Features:

• A mobile-optimized landing page builder
• Automate marketing workflows easily
• A/B testing and personalized content for email marketing
• Easily track and manage Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google Ads
• Monitor and prioritize conversations
• Video content for social media, web pages, and blogs
• Live chat with site visitors
• Lead tracking and scoring with automatic data gathering

2. Salesforce 

Salesforce has been the leading CRM software in the world for many years. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from their many products, which can manage both sales and support.

With integration, your business phone system can be integrated with your CRM, allowing your reps to call directly from Salesforce:

Features:

• Engage your audience with unique and interactive websites
• Easy and quick experience creation with template system
• Collaboration, group, and team features
• Video sharing and file sharing
• Ticket creation portal and knowledge base for unique customer support / self-service options
• Community badges
• Metrics are measured and analyzed using pre-configured and customizable “Lightning” dashboards
• Automated workflows for sharing contacts, leads, and records

3. Intercom

Another well-known platform for customer engagement is Intercom. This platform focuses on chatbots, live chats, messenger-based conversations, and workflow automation tools for customer support and sales.

You can start video or voice calls from the Intercom app by integrating your business phone. They can start a meeting and share their screens in just a few clicks. Your sales and support teams can then provide the best possible service to each customer.

Features:

• Automated lead nurturing and customer onboarding with robust live chat software
• Managing push notifications and mobile carousels for your business’s app
• Personalized and Automated Emails
• Chatbot Greetings for Website Visitors
• Messaging Automation
• Routing and Scheduling Automation
• Workflow Management Tools
• Extensive CRM Integrations
• Phone and Video Integrations
• Calendar Integrations with Apps like Jira Cloud and Outlook

4. Zendesk

Zendesk is another well-known customer service tool that offers many of the same features as Intercom. However, what makes Zendesk so popular is its robust feature set suite of products that come at an affordable price.

Zendesk is known for delivering rich conversational experiences across web, mobile, and social channels, making it one of the most widely used customer engagement solutions.

You can easily fill the gap left by Zendesk’s phone channel, which is the only communication channel it lacks.

Zendesk has a suite of analytics 📊 and reporting tools that give you a holistic view of popular conversations across your customer journey optimization.

You can use Zendesk to start your customer engagement operations with ease. There is a lot of support around it, so integrating it with your CX stack will be easy.

Features:

• A leading ticketing system that integrates Facebook, Twitter, and emails
• Tracking and archiving tickets are easier with custom fields and tags
• Mobile and web omnichannel customer interactions
• Support via email, voice, SMS, and live web chat
• Workflow automation customized
• Over 1,000 apps and integrations are available on Zendesk
• Solid APIs

5. Helpwise

Originally designed as a shared inbox tool, Helpwise now allows customers to consolidate all their conversations in one place. Using a shared inbox, team members can handle email, SMS, Whatsapp, social media, and live chat interactions.

Helpwise allows support teams  to collaborate more effectively by creating a shared SMS inbox that’s linked to your business 💼 number in Helpwise

Features:

• For better security and productivity, each user has their own password
• Shared inbox lets you tag, assign, or chat with your team
• Dropbox, Agile CRM, Trello, and Zoho CRM integrations
• Automate workflows and track metrics
• Personalize and automate emails
• Personalize website greetings with a chatbot
• Chatbots automate messaging, routing, and scheduling

How do VoIP Cloud Phones Increase Digital Customer Engagement?

VoIP cloud phones increase digital engagement by enabling businesses to communicate more effectively with their customers through advanced call management features such as call forwarding and call management.

KrispCall is a top choice for customer engagement because of its global capabilities, real-time call listening feature, and continuous feature expansion.

Businesses looking to improve digital customer engagement can take advantage of the platform’s affordable pricing and user-friendly interface to manage calls from multiple regions.

Conclusion

Digital customer engagement is vital for building brand loyalty, and businesses must prioritize it to succeed in the competitive digital landscape. To boost engagement, businesses should define goals, choose appropriate channels, use CRM platforms, develop engagement strategies, and personalize experiences.

HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, Zendesk, and Helpwise are some of the leading platforms used to improve DCE. Through targeted marketing campaigns, personalized recommendations, interactive content, or responsive customer support, businesses can effectively engage with their customers.

FAQ

What are some common challenges to successful digital customer engagement?

A number of common challenges can hinder digital customer engagement. Among them are:

• Data Management: Effectively managing and leveraging customer data can be challenging due to its volume, variety, and velocity. Taking actionable insights from this data requires robust systems to collect, store, and analyze it.
• Personalization: Understanding individual customer preferences and behavior is key to providing personalized experiences. Without advanced segmentation and targeting strategies, it is difficult to achieve this level of personalization.
• Channel Proliferation: Businesses must navigate multiple touchpoints to engage with customers consistently across platforms like social media, email, chat, and mobile apps.
• Integration of Systems: Integration of CRM, marketing automation, and analytics tools is key for seamless customer experiences. Integration can, however, be complex and time-consuming.
• Resource Allocation: Making sure a consistent brand voice and experience is maintained across different digital engagement initiatives can be challenging, especially for businesses with limited resources.

What is the role of digital customer engagement?

The role of digital customer engagement is to effectively connect with customers through various digital channels, provide a better customer experience, and ultimately build and maintain long-term brand loyalty. 

What are the typical media used for customer engagement?

The typical media used for customer engagement include various digital channels such as social media, live chat, messaging apps, email, and websites. These channels enable businesses to interact with customers and prospective buyers, providing personalized service, delivering unique content, and fostering brand affinity. 

Arun Chaudhary

Arun is SEO Analyst at KrispCall. He has written in extensively in the field of cloud telephony and call center solutions.