What Is A Client Engagement Model?

In this blog, you will learn about what is a client engagement model. A client engagement model is an approach that companies take to engaging and building relationships with their customers. A great client engagement model will greatly improve trial conversions, customer satisfaction, income per customer, and customer retention. You will sometimes see this process defined as one that starts post-sales, but we believe that a holistic engagement model should begin with your first interaction with a potential client.

With the recent developments forcing many of us to work remotely, there has been a strong focus on developing and continuing client relationships. That is to say, working remotely with clients whilst maintaining and developing strong and supportive relationships will be a big trend. In addition, these can provide accountants with the ability to deliver their clients a totally joined accounting and financial service offering under their own personal brand. 

Why Is Client Engagement Model Important?

Now that you know what is a client engagement model, let us move forward and learn about its importance. Client engagement is vital for customer success. It is no longer a series of one-off experiences, but an ongoing process. Customer gain is no longer the end, rather the beginning of the story for companies. Companies understand that customer gain is as important as customer engagement. Regardless of whether your company provides great customer success or not, it is important that proactive engagement with customers is managed by an engagement model.

That is to say, it benefits buyers and suppliers alike by increasing close rates while meeting current B2B client expectations. Keep clients engaged throughout their purchase journey to develop customer loyalty and collect valuable customer information. In addition, more interactions lead buyers to find your brand more valuable and provide you with customer insights. Those client insights can inform marketing decisions such as retargeting and content development, as well as sales processes such as messaging and outreach methods. It helps by:

• Boosting brand experience
• Increasing client loyalty and trust
• Providing valuable customer feedback and insight
• Improving customer experience
• Increasing sales speed

Benefits Of Client Engagement Model

Moving forward, we know what is a client engagement model and its importance. Let us learn about the benefits it brings. The highest quality customer experience is a crucial ingredient of every customer engagement strategy. With high-quality experience comes benefits. Here are some of the key benefits that companies can gain by planning a client engagement model for their business:

• Improved Customer Retention

Engaged customers will continue to build long-term relationships with the brand. In fact, research shows that businesses that focus on customer engagement strategies are more likely to make customers spend more on their products and services and convert them into loyalists of the brand.

• Shorter Sales Cycle

One of the key benefits of a client engagement model is that it helps businesses gain a shorter sales cycle. In this system, customers and other prospects can utilize a customer engagement portal to instantly access the information they need irrespective of the stage of the buying process that they are on.

• Boosts Marketing Efficiency

Modern marketing is all about engaging the customers. In several cases, marketing efforts go down the drain as they fail to capture customers’ interest. With effective customer engagement strategies in place, marketing efforts are expected to reap better results as they are more likely to capture the customers’ attention.

• Brand Differentiation

With the increasing competition in the market, companies are constantly expected to bring something new to the table. Utilizing opportunities that other players in the market would have missed, such as planning customer engagement strategies ensure that brands effectively differentiate themselves and gain a greater chunk of the market share.

Stages Of Client Engagement

Now that you know what is a client engagement model, let us learn about the different stages. That is to say, although every customer experiences a different client journey when interacting with a brand, most go through the same stages. They are as such:

• Unawareness

This is the stage where a client does not yet know about your company. Getting the word out is the best possible strategy here. You need to generate content (text, audio, visual) to attract as many visitors as possible. Visitors need you to teach them about your offerings, your expertise, and your knowledge of every single part of your business. If you have the budget, go for events or external advertising to make your first impression.

• Discovery

This is the beginning stage where customers learn about your company. Try to get an idea of your intended audience – know who they are, where they come from, and how they found out about you. In marketing, this information will be very useful when building client information in the CRM. In addition, don’t forget to consider offline sources as well, such as events and advertising.

• Consideration

Here, customers still haven’t decided whether to choose you or your competitor. They are neutral towards both as they might not have formed a brand image in their mind. They are judging their choices, and you need to really offer some compelling content to make them choose you. Think about case studies like product/service comparisons and customer reviews.

• Conversion

This is the stage where the customer has made a purchase decision and chooses you over the rest of the competition. As soon as a purchase event occurs (i.e. a visitor completes a purchase), send out some form of communication (email, text, notification, etc.) to thank them. Also, if a customer drops out of the journey before he converts, find out why that happened. To improve your chances, send some form of communication when any such event occurs.

• Growth Through Value Creation

You might think that once the visitor has converted, your job is done. But no, the hardest task is to retain the customer and make him loyal towards your brand by delivering value. In this stage, customers have trusted you with their money and have brought whatever product/service you have to offer.

That is to say, you should use trigger-based or action-based marketing promotions to keep them engaged with your brand, and send them tips on how to use what they have brought. Look for opportunities to grow your business to foster customer relationships. That is to say, you should think about helpful guides, industry research, the latest happenings and wins in this stage. Reward loyal clients and reach out to disengaged clients to try to get their interest.

In addition, every stage in the process should be planned out in advance, and a clear-cut action plan should be put in place. A proper boost and constant action must be done to improve business value. That is to say, don’t ignore your unaware clients, or they will go with your competition instead of choosing your brand.