As a followup to yesterday’s post on online customer engagement, reader Sarah Woodbridge suggested taking a look at cScape’s report on Customer Engagement. The report is well worth a look (and it’s free!). They’ve been producing a report for 3 years so they have a bit of historical data as well.
Customer engagement is widely seen as a way of deepening and enriching a product or service offering and a method for gaining customer insight. – The cScape Online Customer Engagement Survey Report 2009
Here are some of the key findings:
- Only 42% of organizations surveyed have a defined customer engagement strategy in place
- 41% of respondents said that deteriorating economic climate has resulted in a greater focus on customer engagement
- There’s interest in creating relationships with customers to increase the long-term customer value and also to increase the value delivered to the customer.
- Most organizations feel that sensitivity to price is a key customer behavior that will have to be addressed in the next 12 months (48%).
- Email newsletters are the most likely tactic to improve customer engagement (59%).
- Web 2.0 and social media such as user ratings & feedback (41%), user-generated content (37%), blogging (36%) and social networks (36%) will also be used to engage customers.
- Very few companies (5%) have a strategy that uses mobile channels.
- Lack of resources continues to be a barrier to successful customer engagement.
- About a third of companies site problems with technology as a significant barrier to cultivating better customer engagement.
Technorati Tags: online customer engagement, customer-centric,brand, branding, internet marketing, brand management, brand strategy, internet business strategy