Customer Engagement Benefits

Using social computing tools, companies can create and promote public-facing communities, which in turn maximize sales from existing customers and dramatically improve the results of customer satisfaction initiatives.

Incorporating social computing functionality on a company’s online presence provides the ability for businesses to engage customers and stakeholders enabling companies to consistently exceed corporate growth initiatives.

The latest social computing productivity and content creation tools (discussions, blogs, collaborative documents, chats) with intelligence (tagging, workflow, RSS) and tight integration with business systems (email, wikis, CRMs, sales and Customer Support) succeed in connecting people, knowledge and conversations and driving bottom-line business results. Resulting business benefits include:

Increase Sales

Community members average 500 percent higher sales volume compared to non-community customers
Community members spend 54 percent more than non-community customers

Decrease Operating Costs

43% of support community visits are in place of the customer directly contacting Customer Support Services
Cost per interaction with Customer Support Services averages $12 when the customer contacts the Support Centre directly. These costs are reduced to an average of $0.25 when Internet self-service options are used

Increase Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is twice as high for companies that offer online community experiences
Community members remain customers 50% longer than non-community customers

Enhance Company Image and Reputation

Targeting influential Web users can help control and enhance an organisation’s image
Customers report positive experiences in online communities more than twice as often as they do via calls or email
Community and collaboration tools make customers more successful at using your products by allowing them to learn from other customer experiences and ideas

Engage in Customers Communities

Customer communities form with or without you. Social Internet tools enable company’s to create, moderate and to respond to communities
Customer Services, Sales, Marketing and Technical Support Services can engage customers in real-time through community discussions, comments, polling, RSS feeds, blogs and chats

Increase Customer Awareness

Social communities can be used for new product feedback, shortening product development time
Allows company’s to take advantage of customer knowledge to improve market awareness and identify future needs, for new products and services