What is a customer engagement model?
A customer engagement model is an approach businesses take to building and maintaining long-lasting relationships throughout the entire customer journey. The aim of a customer engagement model is to enhance customer experience, increase conversions, improve retention and customer lifetime value to ensure consistent revenue growth. Customer engagement models are generally classified into the following basic types:
Common types of customer engagement models
High-touch engagement models
High-touch onboarding models typically work well for software companies selling high-cost, complex enterprise solutions. The onboarding interaction often starts with an introduction from the sales team and may further involve live online or in-person training sessions and weekly check-ins with a dedicated sales agent or a customer success manager assigned to each customer. It helps ensure smooth product adoption, efficient product usage as well as the ongoing customer success. High-touch engagement approach allows tailoring the onboarding experience to the customers’ needs and business goals, and adjusting it based on how customers respond.
Low-touch engagement models
Low-touch models are suitable for SaaS and B2B companies selling high volume but lower-priced and less complex solutions. The low touch engagement model involves fewer touchpoints with customers while interactions are mostly technology-assisted and automated. The onboarding process usually starts with an automated onboarding email that highlights product features and continues with an automated onboarding email sequence. Customers are also usually assisted through self-service resources such as video guides, tutorials, knowledge base articles and automated chat bots, which are all part of the customer engagement solutions that assure their journey is a pleasant one.
Hybrid engagement models
As a rule, most companies adopt a combination of the two models and modify their customer engagement strategy based on factors like costs and product complexity. A hybrid approach may combine high-touch onboarding with a low-touch post onboarding approach. At the same time, some companies may primarily employ a low-touch onboarding model paired with a high-touch post engagement approach. That can occur when a customer easily signs up for a product or service but may struggle with successful onboarding and require personalized assistance to ensure success in the long run.
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Frequently asked questions
Why are customer engagement models important?
The way businesses interact with customers is critical at all the stages of customer engagement – starting from building content and reaching out to potential customers, to customer acquisition and successful onboarding. Having an efficient customer engagement model in place helps businesses manage customer relationship throughout the entire customer journey, improve customer retention and ensure business success for the long term.
How do you choose the right engagement model?
High-touch engagement models are better suited for businesses offering high cost enterprise products. They often involve many touchpoints with the customer to ensure successful onboarding and ongoing success. While choosing low-touch engagement models that mostly rely on automated strategies makes sense for lower priced and less complex solutions.
How to build a customer engagement model?
Building an efficient customer engagement model and ensuring an engaged customer base requires having a clear understanding of what type of engagement is required in order to meet customers’ expectations, deliver value and maintain long-term relationships. That said, a business needs to ensure that the revenue generated with the customer will justify the associated costs in case a high-touch model is adopted.
Expert note
<p>Customer engagement models are crucial for building long-lasting relationships with customers and improving business success. There are high-touch and low-touch models with a hybrid approach often adopted. </p>
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