Here at Allegiance, we spend a lot of time talking to customers and potential sales prospects about engagement. But if you’re new to the engagement arena, you may ask: What is engagement? And why should my business care about it?
Since we’re going to be blogging about engagement and other related topics moving forward, I thought I would take a moment to explain what engagement is and why it’s so important for businesses today.
Allegiance defines engagement as: The “emotional bond” or “attachment” that customers and employees develop with your business during repeated, ongoing positive interactions with your company. This bond goes beyond a single moment in time and is instead, defined by the enduring behaviors, attitudes and heart of your employees and customers.
Or, put another way, when customers are engaged with your business, they are emotionally connected to your organization, passionate about your products and services, as well as aligned with your organization’s purpose and direction.
Although the underlying idea of engagement itself isn’t necessarily new (i.e. for many years, companies have been focused on building customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty) the concept of managing customer and employee engagement like a tangible business asset—as real and as vital as inventory, case, intellectual property, etc.—is. In addition, researchers have found that businesses that do manage their customer and employee engagement like an asset enjoy 1) higher levels of employee and customer loyalty; 2) positive word of mouth; 3) reduced turnover and training costs; 4) receive higher price premiums for their services and products; and 5) greater share of wallet and cross selling, all of which lead to higher company profits and faster growth than those that don’t.
Engagement is also important because successful companies are realizing that the traditional axes of competition—product, price, place and promotion—will no longer propel growth, but will simply allow parity with the competition. Thus, to effectively compete in today’s market, companies must have employees and customers that are not only satisfied, not only loyal, but also engaged.
To learn more about engagement, read the Allegiance white paper titled: “Discover Engagement” (see http://www.allegiance.com/library.php)
Kimberly Carroll, MarCom Manager, Allegiance
