Customer Engagement Strategies That Help Boost Your Reputation Management

Reputation management is always a challenge for any business. With every review shared or comment posted across different platforms, the public perception surrounding your brand is being molded and constantly redefined. So how do you adapt? By being proactive in your approach and adopting a customer engagement strategy to improve your prospects’ perception of you. 

What Is Customer Engagement?

Google the question, what is customer engagement?, and you will likely be served with tons of search results providing varying definitions of the term. But at their essence, every reliable source will talk about engagement as the interactions between you and your customers – and they are absolutely right.

So, what is customer engagement according to us at Rize? Generally speaking, customer engagement refers to a customer’s relationship with a brand. It describes the quality of that relationship, whether negative or positive, and how well customers interact with that brand in terms of:

• How interactions occur and for how long
• When interactions occur (pre-purchase, post-purchase, during promos, etc.)
• How much interaction takes place
• How frequently these interactions happen

Why You Should Implement a Customer Engagement Strategy

For many businesses today, improving your reputation online means you need to increase customer engagement; it’s a numbers game. Research suggests that higher rates of engagement directly increase a business’s reputation score – a metric used to quantify your online reputation. This is why customer engagement marketing is important.

However, customer engagement can take many forms. Customer engagement examples include leaving a review on Google, reacting to a social media post or making a complaint on your customer engagement platform. As evidenced by these customer engagement examples, some forms of engagement are positive and others are negative. 

So, while it is important to increase engagements through customer engagement marketing, improving the quality of those engagements should also be top priority. Having a customer engagement strategy in place can help you build a positive online reputation. When you define your customer engagement strategies, you can:

1. Foster meaningful relationships with your customers.
2. Improve the overall customer experience you offer.
3. Increase your likelihood of getting a referral.

Evidently, the benefits of employing the right strategy are huge. And according to SEMrush, 96 percent of satisfied customers who experience positive interactions are more than likely to tell the people around them. So, by continuing to provide a positive customer experience, you can effectively improve your online reputation through word of mouth. 

Strategies for Effective Consumer Relations To Improve Brand Reputation

1. Personalize Your Interactions With Your Customers

Reputation management agency experts agree that one of the key strategies for effective consumer relations is personalization. Consumers today gravitate towards brands that listen to them and actively tailor experiences for them. Seventy-two percent of customers say they only engage with personalized content, while a lack of personalization in your messaging generates 83 percent lower response rates.

The key to personalization is active listening. Pay attention to your customers’ preferences and tailor your interactions based on what they like. What are their interests? What kind of tone do they respond to? What experiences would they like to have? Let your customers know that you’re listening to them by creating experiences that resonate with them. 

2. Engage With Your Customers on Different Platforms

One thing to remember in effective customer engagement management is that not all communication needs to happen on a single platform. Your customers aren’t tied to just one – and you shouldn’t be, either. Seventy-six percent of customers say they prefer using different channels depending on context. 

Nevertheless, as a user-centric business, your goal should be to reach different audiences and be available to them when they have questions, queries or complaints. In doing so, you are communicating to them that they matter to you and that you are willing to engage with them anytime. This enables you to build a reputation for being available, responsive and ready to serve their needs when they need you. Just make sure you use the right customer engagement solutions to make the process more seamless.

3. Give Shoutouts for Great Reviews

Humans crave recognition. People want to be recognized for the contributions they make, even if it’s something as simple as leaving a positive review. You don’t need to wait around for your reputation management agency partner to tell you to engage with your customers. If you recently got a great review from a customer, give props to the author by making a social post about it. Simply screenshot the review, tag them and thank them for leaving the review.

Giving shoutouts for a review accomplishes two things simultaneously: You get to highlight a positive aspect of your business by sharing the review while also motivating others to leave a similar review. 

4. Reward Followers Who Constantly Engage With You

Over the course of doing good business, some of your most loyal customers will proactively want to engage with you and leave reviews on their own. Just like how online reputation management services emphasize the need to highlight good reviews, you should also recognize and encourage this behavior by offering rewards. These rewards don’t have to be monetary or physical – invites to webinars or links to resources that customers can use to make the most out of their purchase can greatly benefit them.

5. Host Live Sessions With Your Followers

Online reputation management company professionals suggest keeping your customers engaged by interacting with them in live events on a customer engagement platform like social media. This is a great way to humanize your brand and reach out to your customers directly. For your customers, attending live events offers plenty of opportunities to interact with you, your products and services as well as other users from the same industry. This gives you more brand exposure while also creating a sense of community around your products and services. 

6. Use the Right Customer Engagement Solutions To Increase Customer Engagement

Customer engagement management can be challenging and, quite honestly, may start feeling repetitive. If it gets overwhelming, some businesses turn to partnering with an external online reputation management company. Others rely on customer engagement software.

Find the right customer engagement platform that helps you automate and organize your workflows. Using the right customer engagement software can free up some time to effectively communicate with your customers so that each interaction feels more human. By employing customer engagement solutions to work for your business, you can create a stellar customer experience across different channels, ensuring that you build and maintain a 5-star online reputation. 

Strategies for Reputation Management Success

Adopting customer engagement strategies can help you create a positive experience for your customers. With every interaction, your followers feel a stronger connection with your brand. Having a customer engagement marketing strategy creates a more efficient process, helping you build deeper relationships with more people as you move prospects along your funnel. This is how you can proactively build and manage your online reputation – through customer engagement management. 

In this blog, we shared with you customer engagement ideas and strategies that can help you manage your online reputation more effectively by automatically generating more engagement. Although there aren’t strict formulas for success, take a page out of our customer engagement ideas and strategies and choose a strategy that works best for you. 

Do you need help with professional reputation management? Get it from Rize. As an online reputation management company, we offer online reputation management services that enable you to maintain a stellar reputation online. Our reputation management agency services make professional reputation management a breeze with customer engagement software that helps you attract and engage more customers. Take control of your online reputation through more efficient customer engagement management with Rize. Learn more about our online reputation management services and improve brand reputation today by dropping a message here or giving us a call at 866-325-0303.