Many people have different opinions of what ‘Customer Engagement’ exactly stands for. In this article I don’t want to create yet another definition, but I’d like to elaborate on our understanding of Customer Engagement. In my opinion, it’s all about: how do we give what the customer wants (and maybe something more), giving them a positive feeling about the brand/product/service, so they are likely to become more loyal to the brand.

But then of course, the next question will be: How do we (the marketers of a brand/product/service) persuade our customers that we are worth their time, effort, money and commitment? We won’t be able to engage everyone, and we must accept that those who do engage with us will do so to different degrees and in different ways. Customer engagement isn’t a nirvana that can be reached; it is a process of developing and nurturing relationships.

In that sense I’d like to refer to the stages consumers travel through as they interact with a particular brand. This Customer Engagement Journey, consists of 5 different stages: Awareness, Consideration, Inquiry, Purchase and Retention. Marketers tend to focus on the latter two stages: purchase and retention, because this is their end-goal. But we have to keep in mind that if we really want to ‘engage’ people, not just to ‘persuade’ them to buy something, we have to include the first three stages as well.

Let me try to give you a simple example. I won’t go into the obvious e-commerce platforms, but I will focus on a site of a big well known brand: Philips.com.

When I’m interested to learn more about a Flat TV/LCD screen I would usually go to www.google.com and simply type ‘flat TV’. One of the first results that come up is the link to www.philips.com (Awareness)

At the first screen, I get an overview of all the different series that Philips is offering me (Consideration):

I can fill in my requirements by faceted search: every time I change a requirement, I directly see the result of this selection. This makes it very easy to navigate, because I don’t have to get back to the search page anytime I want to change a requirement. This is a very visual Product Finder, a rich user experience (Inquiry).

When I’ve found my perfect Flat Screen, I can press the big ‘BUY’ button and I will be referred to stores in my area that have the TV in stock (Purchase). After selection of a store, you will be directed to the website of that specific store. It would be a nice idea for Philips to keep ‘their’ customers, to create their own shop online or to collaborate with online shops in their website.

So far so good, it has been a positive experience for a consumer like me. But, I think Philips is missing a big opportunity by not asking what else they can help me with, or recommending other related products or even by asking my email address for future communication (Retention). If companies would execute this stage correctly, you could get a lot of returning customers because you’ll be able to trigger your consumer with a recommendation that they might like (based on experiences with other customers) (Awareness).

It’s easy to write it down how companies should ‘engage’ their customers, but I know that in real life it’s much harder to execute the complete 5 stages of Customer Engagement. Even the companies that started 10 years ago (like Amazon) with e-commerce, are still learning and continuously adding optimizations. But we’re definitely getting there!