How to turn a customer into an engaged customer

Hanover, February 7 2023

 
In the previous article last week, I explained what customer engagement is and why it’s so important. You will now probably ask yourself: How does a customer become an engaged customer? Today’s article therefore deals with this question precisely.

Trust, comprehension, and relevant content

The foundation of any relationship between customers and brands or companies is trust. To this end, it is important that the customer is always valued and treated with respect.
As a first important step, customers should only receive offers that are relevant to them via the channels they prefer. The customer wants to be understood as an individual and not be lost amidst the anonymity of the various systems. This in turn makes it necessary to know the customers’ preferences, which I will discuss in more detail in a separate article at a later date.
Building trust can also be supported through proactive communication. In doing so, it is essential to always be one step ahead of the customer and to proactively offer them solutions to their questions, which they may not even know are interesting or even relevant to them at the time of the offer. Consequently, great importance should be attached to content generation because customers must be continually provided with new information and ideas and be encouraged to use or even share the content.

Data protection

Responsible handling of customer data generated by interaction with or by customers is also important for building and maintaining trust. In this context, the focus is on preventing the misuse of the customer’s data and, above all, negative content on this topic.

Sustainability

The sustainability of a company or brand is also playing an increasingly important role in customer engagement and building trusting customer relationships. Especially in times of climate change and the energy crisis, it is important that companies or brands make a visible contribution to increasing their own or general sustainability and, of course, publicize this.

Making customer engagement measurable

However, it is now also important for customers’ trust in a company or brand to be measurable. Ideally, therefore, companies offer a direct or indirect option through which the customer can simply provide feedback or a rating. This feedback can then be used directly to initiate further measures to further develop the customer relationship.

The customers of the life sciences industry

Since our day-to-day consulting services focus strongly on the life sciences industry and have a special connection to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector, I would like to explain how a customer is defined in this area. Until now, the focus of biotech and pharmaceutical companies has been on medical personnel or medical facilities. This means that these companies are becoming more and more focused on Health Care Professionals (HCPs) and Health Care Organizations (HCOs) as customers and are thus operating more extensively in the B2B sector. However, we are certain that patients, as actual consumers of the products, will also play an increasingly important role in this area regarding customer engagement. The topic of patients, however, will be the subject of a separate article at a later date.
For now, let’s stick to the topic of customer engagement in terms of HCPs and HCOs and address the question of how we can lay the groundwork for further customer development. As a start, we note that Customer Engagement starts with asking the right questions in relation to HCPs and HCOs. Only then can a life sciences company obtain the data it needs to gain important insights and derive further measures from them.
For this reason, my colleague Marcos Garcia Villas will be addressing the topic of what questions should be asked in relation to customers in the upcoming week.