What Are Customer Interactions? (Benefits and Tips)

Updated September 30, 2022

A healthy business works hard to constantly bring in new customers and maintain its current ones by creating positive interactions. These interactions can help businesses discover their customers' demands and devise appropriate methods to meet them. Understanding customer interactions can help a business adopt effective strategies to increase customer satisfaction. In this article, we explain the meaning of customer interactions, review the benefits, explore different ways of interacting with customers and share tips to build effective interactions.

What are customer interactions?

Customer interactions are the communications and engagements that occur between a company and a customer. There are typically many instances of this throughout the customer journey. These interactions may relate to sales promotion, marketing campaigns, and other service-related businesses. Customers often interact with a business for several reasons. The following are some popular reasons a customer may want to communicate with a representative of a company:

They reach out to enquire about an ad for the brand on social media.
They want to sign up for a company's e-mail newsletter so they can receive updates and promotions.
They receive an e-mail from the sales team and want to schedule a meeting.
They seek answers to questions about a product, service, or marketing promotion.
They start a live chat with a representative while viewing the website.

Ways of interacting with customers

Social media helps ensure frequent interactions with customers. Some ways businesses reach customers are:

Social media

Businesses interact with their customers using their social media pages or by placing paid ads on other pages. They encourage clients to view and post reviews related to their experience with the product. These businesses also organize contests and other events to create awareness for their brands and actively interact with their customers. Companies also provide information on special offers and discounts using their social media pages. Increasing sales, encouraging customers' active engagement, and boosting the brand are all advantages of interacting with customers on social media.

Calls and messages

This form of interaction is typically for existing customers. Companies sometimes call customers to perform market research, carry out opinion surveys, and discuss customer experiences. These calls can help businesses gather important feedback from their customers. Businesses can incorporate ideas from the feedback to improve the quality of their products and provide a better customer experience.

Live chat

This option is viable for customers and potential clients who need help or want to enquire about the business. Through a live chat, companies can provide real-time assistance to their customers. Live chat can be an alternative to phone calls and e-mail because it's quick and convenient to use.

Other ways to communicate with current or potential clients include the following:

E-mail
Through a website
Self-service troubleshooting
Messaging apps

Stages of customer interaction

Customer interaction typically follows the five stages in the purchase cycle:

Awareness

During the awareness stage, the customer typically doesn't know anything about the business or brand. Popular ways companies interact with prospective customers include social media and their websites. Discussing their services and products on these platforms can help create awareness of their brand. Potential customers can find the products they need by seeing the company's website, paid advertisements, and other online content.

Consideration

In the consideration phase, customers often compare one company's products to competing brands to determine which best item fits their needs. Helpful customer interactions at this stage include promoting the brand's special offers, offering discounts, and providing other value-added services. Promoting other benefits associated with the products helps customers choose a particular product because they tend to feel like they're receiving a better offer.

Acquisition

Customers enter the acquisition stage when they make a purchase by phone or through the website. This stage differs for different businesses depending on how the customer reaches out. Connecting with prospective buyers on the phone allows customer representatives to respond and address any concerns and enquiries. They can also ask further questions to make specific recommendations that meet the customer's needs.

They can also educate customers on how to use their services or products. When potential customers contact the company through the business page or website, the company can also provide educative and compelling content to help them make decisions for their purchases.

Experience

Once customers learn enough about the company to make a purchase, they move into the experience stage. The company tries to maintain these customers by continuously providing value to them. Businesses can do this by satisfying their needs. They can also offer special discounts and promos to keep these customers. Some ways to do this include interacting with customers through social media, live chat, and periodic calls. Conducting research and opinion surveys often helps businesses determine ways to improve their product quality and identify ways to increase customer satisfaction.

Loyalty

Maintaining loyalty is the final stage. Customers reach this stage after the business guides them through finding, purchasing, and enjoying the product or service. Loyal customers are often a vital asset to the brand because they continually make additional purchases. It's common for these loyal customers to advertise the company's goods and services by posting them on their social media pages, leaving good reviews, and discussing them with friends. This stage helps ensure the longevity of the business.

Benefits of customer interaction

The following are common benefits of maintaining positive interactions with customers:

Improves the customer experience

Interacting with customers allows businesses to receive constructive feedback from their customers on ways to improve the customer experience. It provides customers with a platform to air their concerns and reservations about their experience with the products. The company may take these complaints and find ways to improve the product or service to provide their customers with improved customer satisfaction and experience. This interaction can assist businesses in retaining their existing customers and acquiring new ones.

Boosts brand image

A positive brand image typically provides businesses with credibility and competence. It's usually essential for companies to maintain a positive brand image because it helps customers assess the quality of a brand and make comparisons with its competitors. One way to boost a brand image is by frequently interacting with customers. Customers typically leave positive reviews for a business and refer their friends and family when they feel that the company listens to and engages with their feedback.

Aids customer recovery

Interacting with customers can aid customer recovery. Customer recovery is a process, or strategy, that businesses use to help unsatisfied customers. Talking with them can help prevent them from switching to and purchasing from a competitor company. This interaction helps customer service representatives listen to the customer's concerns and devise methods to solve their problems. Businesses that create positive interactions with customers often create customer satisfaction.

Gives businesses a competitive advantage

When businesses interact with customers, they tend to discover new ways to handle challenges. This strategy can help them devise ways to improve their process and the quality of their products, which may lead to an advantage over their competitors.

Increases profit margin

Interacting with customers and getting feedback from them contributes to an increased profit margin for businesses. Customer interaction helps companies increase their profit margin because it enables them to meet customers' demands and needs. They can keep existing customers while increasing customer satisfaction and customer experience, which typically leads to increased sales.

Tips on maintaining an effective customer interaction management

The following are some best practices and tips for making every customer interaction effective:

Be empathetic: When interacting with a customer, it's important to show empathy for their struggles and gratitude for their loyalty to make them feel better. Empathy helps create a positive experience for the customers and helps the customer become loyal to the brand.
Be communicative: Being transparent when communicating with a customer can help provide clarity. When a company shares the steps it took to resolve an issue, it helps prevent reoccurrences and often leaves the customer feeling satisfied.
Ask for feedback: Making conscious efforts to conduct opinion surveys and research to get feedback from customers can help improve the customer experience. It serves as an effective way to identify potential problems.
Be conscientious: It's often essential for companies to follow up on promises to help customers resolve problems. Providing customers with a reasonable timeframe within which they can expect a resolution builds trust and positive customer interactions.

What Are Customer Interactions? (Benefits and Tips)