Customer engagement: Understanding your client-type and engaging them

8 min readDec 23, 2020

Understanding your audience is the key to unlocking your business growth and opportunity. We know this is a no brainer and many businesses today are spending millions from their budget on AI, ML, and big data analytics just to unlock or know what their customers are thinking. These technologies are also being used to forecast buying trends, patterns, and sales figures.

Modern businesses are constantly checking various analytics, the marketers are going through every “how to…” and “best practices for…” guides available on the internet today. But many overlook the importance of understanding their client-type and engaging them with their marketing activities afterward.

To be successful in business you must know these different client-types and ways of engaging them with your brand!

Why understanding your client-type is so important?

Have you heard of the notion, “you don’t get a second chance for a first impression”?

Let’s give you a context that will help you understand this better. For instance, you are out for a coffee. With the social distancing norm in place, you have to adhere to the rule and find a quiet place with less footfall. Right now, adherence to rule and your own safety is your priority. After walking or driving for a while (the mode of transportation matters too), you finally see a cafe with all the necessary safety measures in place. They have “please wear a face mask” sign near the entrance of the cafe, they are equipped with sanitizers and “no more than two-person” on the table rule.

The cafe matches your mental checklist for the safety guidelines, and voila, they are serving the coffee just the way you want.

The next time you visit the same cafe, you see that they are maintaining the standards whilst one of your favorite cafes is failing to do so!

The cafe which is working with limited staff amid all the safety measures might see less footfall but more takeaways based on the hygienic measures in place. Hence it will be profitable eventually.

The same is applied to your business. How? Let’s see.

Now reverse the role! You are the business now and based on all the insights from the data analytics tool you have created various client-types for your business.

As we know, clients vary from each other so do their needs, browsing pattern and their buying trend. If you know the client-type and segregate the marketing content you are displaying on your website, you will see a decrease in the pattern of your visitors leaving your website.

By understanding your client-type, you are now engaging them with what they want to see, hence you are working towards achieving your revenue goals.

What is customer engagement?

Before we delve further into the topic lets just understand the brief meaning of customer engagement.

Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer (either B2C or B2B) and an organization (company or brand) through various online or offline channels. — Wikipedia

Driving customer engagement in your business is all about

enabling empathetic connections
driving customer relationship through interactions,
hearing your customers out
providing value all the time

With more and more businesses taking to social channels and blogs to interact with their audience, providing a persona to your brand becomes all the more important. And with more users taking the help of the internet to know about products and services or the company that provides them, you must create a brand persona that appeals to the masses.

You can create your brand’s persona based on

Empathy
Long-lasting impression
Value

Your brand needs to have a tone, personality and must provide value to the customer after they make a purchase. For any brand out there today, achieving a human-centric customer interaction is important. By driving customer engagement with their various client-type, they can effectively boost their business and plan their expansion.

What are the various client types?

Yes, engaging the customers is important, and creating your own persona to deal with these client-types is important too. So, how do you move forward on developing a sound customer engagement strategy? By laying the foundation of your various client types. In this article, we will be highlighting some of the important client-type that you as a business must know about and also how you can increase your engagement with them.

1. The Silent Sam

Customers with this persona are very difficult to understand and deal with. Silent Sam can be a regular customer who is often non-responsive to your email communications or is a potential customer who shows the least interest in what you have to offer and often avoid any type of communication.

Although Silent Sam is active on social media platforms and does check your email communication regularly he doesn’t respond to them. Silence from the customer end makes it really tricky to understand what actions you must take as you are not aware if they are in a happy mood or “mark this email address as spam” angry mood. TOUGH!

Let’s just categorize this persona. These customers fall under these categories:

These customers are not really looking to make a purchase at this stage and just exploring various options at this time without anything specific need or requirement.
They have not understood what you are offering.
They do not yet feel the connection with you at this stage.

So, how to engage with customers like silent Sam?

Helping them identify the ‘WHY’ angle of your offering. Show them why they should use your product.
Such customers are not fully aware of the problems they have in their daily processes.
Point out the problem at hand and show them how you solve it.
Based on the email tracking data, create the best way of communicating with them.
Start with a proactive chat, phone call, or personalized email.
Let them know that you are here to help them.
Draft close-ended questions and send it to them via email.
Send out FAQs and a link to your live chat tool.

2. The Angry Anny

Well, you will always find customers with such personas in your daily dealings. The major reason why customers get angry is that businesses fail to provide them what they are actually looking for. In short, you need to know, understand, and meet their expectations. The majority of the angry customers are disappointed at businesses because they failed to provide the solution promised to them.

Chances are they will not want to give you a second chance, but it is all about the game of chance isn’t it? So, how do you engage with customers angry Anny?

Giving them a helping hand and listening to what they have to say.
Revert to their social media comments.
Ask for honest feedback.
Start the conversation afresh.
Apologize to them for the lapse in value deliverance.
Create personalized plans for them and try to turn them into loyal customers.

3. The Confused Kelly

These customers like what they see on your website or stores but always doubt the purchasing decision. They want to have more information about the product or service before spending their money on it. Basically, they want to know if what they are going to pay for derives actual value for them or not!

How can you engage with customers like confused Kelly?

Have a section on your website that talks about exactly what these customers want to see; a value proposition.
Share customer success stories and their testimonials on your social media feed via email.
Share your live chat link so that these customers can reach out to you quickly.
Show them statistics, pros and cons, and share actual facts on the reasons for using your product.
You can also run in-app discounts and other offers to push them towards making a purchase.

4. The Responsive Ray

These customers are one step away from being your loyal customers and brand promoters. The responsive customers are the most fun people businesses can interact with and are present on every social channel. The downside, if things go awry with them, is that you will face their ire on all these channels, simultaneously. They will not hold back from expressing their disappointment with what you are providing. You have to tread carefully as to not upset the responsive ray in your current prospect or customer base.

And how do businesses engage with customers like responsive Ray?

Pan collaborations with them on your social channels.
Making them your official brand promoters will help you earn their loyalty.
Promote their content on your social media channel (of course you have to verify the same before letting it live on your official channels).
Plan out affiliate marketing and provide them with incentives on the successful promotion of your product or services.
Ask for regular feedback. Make them feel important for the success of your business.
Always make sure that they are happy with what you are providing.

5. Loyal Luke

Loyal Luke is the customer you always want to deal with. He loves your product and keeps spending on your product or service at regular time-interval.

Pamper them and continue giving them value for their money and they will stay loyal to you. Plan better incentives for them as they already are your loyal customer. Keep them happy and they will keep recommending you to their connections. Customers like loyal luke are the ones who help you spread positive word of mouth regarding your offerings.

How do you engage with customers like loyal Luke?

Create a dedicated customer success team and assign individual points of contact.
Stay in constant touch with these loyal customers.
Keep giving them shoutouts on your official social media channels.
Trigger in-app campaigns for them.
Make them your brand advocates.
Release their testimonials/social proof and market your products to potential customers.
Keep sending personalized emails/newsletters to inform them of the latest updates.
Develop case studies and live examples based on their stories.

Conclusion

Customer engagement rides on the back of empathy. If you empathize with your audience, you will get to know them better. You will know their needs, understand their demands, and deliver the value proposition that they are looking for in this competitive market.

There are many advanced analytical tools out there in the market that are understanding business owners understand the client’s behavior. Use these tools and create stronger customer touchpoints.

We hope that these techniques will help you enhance your customer engagement efforts. Try finding the various client-type that we have discussed here in this article and keep experimenting with the engagement practices.