Improve Your Marketing Strategy with Real-Time Customer Engagement

Customer engagement marketing strategy

Imagine if you could get to really know your customers. What if you could pull back the curtain to reveal the psychological forces shaping your customers' expectations?

Understanding a few tenets of basic human psychology now makes it possible for organizations to dig deep into customer behavior.

There’s nothing new about harnessing psychology to better connect with audiences. Executives turn to behavioral psychology to build brand loyalty. Organizations tap into the well of academic research on color and psychology to develop persuasive marketing messages.

Now, businesses are able to combine the power of psychology and technology to serve fast, highly customized engagements. It’s why leading organizations across industries are embracing concepts like chat commerce and the ability for customers to transact on their preferred messaging channels. This sort of experience is designed to keep customers coming back.

By better understanding how psychology influences your customers’ preferences, you gain the insights you need to design the best customer experiences. Let’s take a look at some of the leading studies and analysis from academics and marketing leaders.

Real-time customer engagement and the power of now

There’s no denying it - we love the power of now.

Scholars suggest our obsession with immediacy is hardwired into our DNA.

“It’s a natural human urge to want good things and to want them NOW. It has almost certainly provided an evolutionary advantage for humans and their ancestors, as life for pre-modern humans hinged on decisions made and actions taken in the immediate far more than those intended for long-term gain,” writes Courtney Ackerman.

Since it’s a human impulse to prefer instant results, we dread waiting.

MIT theory professor, Richard Larson, said we even tend to exaggerate the time we’re spending in queues.

“According to...Larson, ‘the psychology of queuing is more important than the statistics of the wait itself.’ We tend to think we’ve been standing in line for longer than we really have; our perceived wait time is longer than your actual wait time.”

And brands are rushing to meet this need for speed.

Always on the bleeding edge of market trends, e-commerce giant Amazon will offer same-day drone delivery to get your goods to you within 30 minutes.

A SuperOffice study showed that the average response time for a customer service request was 12 hours.  Compare this with live chat software, where the response is instant even beyond operating hours. With a tool like Clickatell Touch, you can respond to hundreds of queries at once, meeting customer needs as they arise.

Deliver personalized customer engagement

There’s nothing sweeter to a person than the sound of their own name.

In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Cargenie writes:

“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

And it turns out, a unique reaction takes place in the brain when we hear our own names, according to a study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

Other findings by the University of Texas at Austin revealed that we especially value personalized experiences in the digital era. In a post discussing these findings, HubSpot expands on the two reasons why personalization matters: it gives people control and helps them manage information overload.

“You’re not just getting what everyone else is getting with personalization. Instead, you’re getting something tailored to you. And because of that, it makes you feel more in control.“

And, on information overload:

“With personalization, you aren’t presented with thousands of resources to sort through and consume. Instead, you are -- ideally -- presented with exactly the information you were looking for. Hence, you never feel “overloaded" with information.”

It’s why more and more companies invest in meaningful, personalized experiences.

Consider the endless possibilities and opportunities in offering your customers personalized, real-time customer engagement on the channels they’re already communicating on, and prefer. For instance, with Clickatell Touch, you can communicate with your customers via a range of messaging, web, and social applications and resolve queries quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

Your clients can book appointments, check the status of deliveries, and access account information - all on a secure platform they’re already using to reach out to family and friends.

Think of the difference it might make in your customers’ lives. With the live chat capability of applications like Touch, your customers can reach you on several platforms. And your team of support agents can respond via a simple, unified interface.

Keep it simple

Amid the swirl of evolving technologies and trends, figuring out what your customers truly want seems like an impossible task. One thing is clear though: customers prefer to ease.

A Corporate Executive Board study found that time and time again, consumers didn’t respond well to complicated marketing messages. As human beings, we long for the simple things.

Research shows that “fancy language” is off-putting, and the audience tends to think less of the writer. In retail, another study found that customers responded better when fonts were easier to read.

Connecting with your customers

Your customers have a natural affinity for fast, personalized and simple services. You need to meet those needs and engage with customers in ways they’re already primed to love. Check out Clickatell Touch if you want to raise the bar for service in your industry and set your business up to unlock new levels of customer engagement success.