Authentic customer engagement is vital to long-term positive relationships with the people who use your products and services. From onboarding to adoption and value realization, your organization should be generating a regular cadence of customer interactions. How do your current interactions stack up to these five customer engagement best practices?
Effective engagement activities start with understanding your customers’ desired outcomes. They continue with interactions that help them plan for success with your products and services.
Within all those interactions, it’s critical that clear expectations be set for the type and level of services you can provide your customer. When all members of your team know these expectations, they can then focus of meeting them—and strive to exceed them.
To accelerate time-to-value, nurture long-term relationships, and drive recurring revenue, leverage these five customer engagement best practices:
1. Sales Hand-Off
Define an effective hand-off from the Sales to Service team.
2. Onboarding
Provide self-guided or assisted onboarding to all new customers.
3. Customer Outcomes Assessment
Identify customer needs and desired outcomes.
4. Success Planning
Provide self-guided or assisted success planning.
5. Regular Interactions
Assess customer health, provide planning and conduct business and technical reviews.
Key Customer Engagement Metrics to Know and Use
To assess the effectiveness of your Customer Engagement activities, consider the following metrics:
- Success Plan Rate – Percent of eligible customers with success plan.
- % Onboarded – Percent of new customers successfully onboarded.
- Time to Value – The average time to achieve outcomes and realize value from product.
- Adoption Rate – Percent of customers to reach adoption milestones.
- Customer Touchpoints – The number and frequency of customer interactions through both digital and personal channels.
