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It is critical for businesses in any industry to stay engaged with their customers. This helps show customers that their feedback is valued and helps companies build stronger relationships with their customer base - which contributes to long-term success. A customer engagement platform helps foster those connections with customers by providing the tools that businesses need to engage with customers where they are most active, analyze valuable customer information, and track customer interactions.

Improved engagement is just one element of a Customer Experience Management (CXM) platform like boostCX and is a valuable tool. To help provide more insight into customer engagement platforms, we have created a list of the Top 5 Features of Customer Engagement Platforms at boostCX. 

Most Important Features of a Customer Engagement Platform 

The key to an effective Customer Experience Management (CXM) strategy is meaningful customer engagement. Studies have shown that highly-engaged customers buy 90% more frequently and spend 60% more per transaction than those customers who are not engaged. With 71% of modern consumers expecting companies to provide personalized interactions, a platform that prioritizes personalized engagement is essential for meeting those demands.

The most important features of a customer engagement platform are those that provide businesses with the capability to communicate easily with customers, personalize experiences, and analyze key metrics to continuously improve the customer experience at all touchpoints. Here are five of the most important features to look for in a customer engagement platform:

1. Omnichannel Communication and Support

A top-tier platform must allow you to communicate with customers across all of their preferred channels - including email, SMS, social media, live chat, and phone. This omnichannel engagement ensures that customers enjoy a consistent experience and message at every touchpoint by combining customer conversations and history. This means the context of the interaction is never lost as they move from one channel to another. The impact of omnichannel engagement is significant, as data suggests that companies with strong omnichannel engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers - compared to just 33% for those with weaker strategies.

2. Personalized Customer Communication

The ability to personalize interactions is key to customer experience management. A powerful engagement platform leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and customer data - such as purchase history, Browse behavior, and stated preferences - to tailor messages, product recommendations, and offers to individual customers. This makes customers feel understood and valued - and statistics show that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

3. In-Depth and Real-Time Customer Analytics

To improve customer engagement, businesses must be able to understand and measure engagement effectively. High-quality customer engagement platforms provide robust, real-time analytics to track customer interactions, feedback, and behavior across all channels. This data provides invaluable insight into the customer journey, helps you identify friction points, understand satisfaction levels, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your customer engagement strategy.

4. Ability to Integrate with Other Systems

No platform should operate on an island. The best customer engagement solutions offer easy integration capabilities with other essential business systems, that include your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, key e-commerce systems, and social media management platforms. This provides businesses with a single, comprehensive view of the customer journey, breaks down data walls between departments, and provides more complete context for all customer interactions.

5. Workflow Management and Automation

Efficiency is key to providing customer engagement on a larger scale. Workflow automation allows you to automate routine, day-to-day tasks and communications - that include welcome emails, follow-up satisfaction surveys, or support tickets. By automating these processes, you ensure consistent follow-up and free up your team to focus on more complex, high-value customer interactions. An estimated 73% of customers say that making their time a priority is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service.

‍READ MORE: How To Find the Right Customer Experience Management Software

In the end, the top features of a customer engagement platform work together to create a complete, intelligent, and customer-focused environment for your business. The combination of omnichannel communication with deep personalization, powerful analytics, seamless integrations, and smart automation allow you to build stronger relationships, create customer loyalty, and drive long-term growth. Choosing the right platform with these key features is an important first step in building a successful customer experience management strategy.

Contact boostCX for a demo of our customer engagement capabilities and discover our innovative customer experience management solutions!

To better understand how you can improve your brand identity and customer experience, it is important to set benchmarks and understand how the most successful brands operate. If you are looking at successful brands of the past year, you may be asking - which brands were the most popular in 2024? Here is a better look at popular global brands in the past year. 

What Were the Best Global Brands in 2024?

The world's most popular and valuable global brands consistently demonstrate an ability to connect with their customers on multiple levels and on a variety of platforms. This level of global popularity is built on a foundation of innovation, exceptional customer experiences, a high perception of quality and value, strong customer connections, and the ability to adapt to changing market dynamics and consumer preferences. 

Tech-based brands continue to dominate the landscape on the list of most popular global brands based on data provided by Kantar BrandZ with many brands leveraging AI and strong brand equity to drive growth. Here are the top global brands in 2024:

• Apple - $1,015.9 Billion Brand Value: Apple continues to be an elite global brand and was the first brand to surpass a $1 trillion brand valuation. Its success was driven by a strong ecosystem, innovative products, and premium positioning.
• Google - $753.47 Billion Brand Value: Google has maintained its position, dominating the market in online search, AI development, and an impressive suite of digital services.
• Microsoft - $712.88 Billion Brand Value: Microsoft showed significant growth in 2024, influenced by its advancements and integration of AI across its software and cloud-based products and services.
• Amazon - $576.62 Billion Brand Value: Amazon is a global leader in the e-commerce industry and cloud computing, providing innovation in logistics and customer convenience.
• McDonald's - $221.90 Billion Brand Value: McDonald’s has global appeal and the brand’s success was enhanced by innovation that includes the use of AI for dynamic menu boards and order prediction.
• NVIDIA - $201.84 Billion Brand Value: This brand made a big leap in the rankings with a 178% increase in brand value, which was underscored by the growth and importance of AI and high-performance computing.
• Visa - $188.93 Billion Brand Value: Visa continued to be a dominant force in global payments and has built a brand on trust and widespread accessibility.
• Facebook - $166.75 Billion Brand Value: Facebook returned to the top 10 in the rankings, highlighting the value of its massive social network and user engagement.
• Oracle - $145.50 Billion Brand Value: This is the first time Oracle has been in the top 10 of the global rankings, a reflection of its strength in enterprise software and cloud-based data solutions.
• Tencent - $135.22 Billion Brand Value: Tencent is a premium brand in technology, social media, and gaming, with a broad influence in Asian markets.

How To Build a Brand

Building a popular and long-lasting brand is a strategic endeavor that takes time and goes beyond just a logo or marketing campaigns. It requires a deep understanding of your audience and a commitment to consistently delivering on your brand promise. Here are key steps you can take to build a popular brand:

• Define Your Brand Identity: You need to clearly articulate your mission, vision, values, brand voice, and visual identity. Know what your brand stands for and how it benefits customers.
• Know Your Target Audience: Make sure to conduct thorough research to identify your ideal customers, their needs, preferences, pain points, and behaviors. Create detailed customer portfolios and categories to factor into your brand.
• Deliver Consistent Brand Messaging and Experiences: Ensure your brand's message, tone, and values are communicated consistently across all touchpoints and customer interactions, from marketing to sales to service.
• Provide Exceptional Value and Quality: Offer high-quality products or services that consistently meet or exceed customer expectations and solve their problems effectively. Use customer feedback to learn how you can improve products and services.
• Focus on the Customer Experience: It is important that you create positive, consistent, and memorable experiences for your customers at every touchpoint of their journey. Excellent customer experience builds trust and loyalty and leads to long-term success.
• Engage and Build a Community: Brands should interact with their audience authentically on the most relevant platforms, encourage user-generated content, and build a sense of community around your brand.
• Innovate and Adapt: It is important to continuously monitor market trends, listen to customer feedback, and be willing to evolve your offerings and strategies to stay relevant and competitive.

‍READ MORE: Top 8 Automotive Brands with the Most Loyal Customers

The journey to becoming a leading global name is complicated - but a better understanding of which brands were the most popular in 2024 reveals common themes of customer-focuses strategies, innovation, and strong brand building. These top brands don't just sell products or services. They build relationships, deliver consistent value, and create meaningful customer experiences. For any business that hopes to build a popular brand, focusing on a comprehensive customer experience management strategy is critical.

Contact boostCX for a demo of our customer experience management platform and solutions!

A good customer experience is key to the success for many companies and there are many customer experience strategies that can help you and your business reach your goals. With that being said, many businesses want to know - what is the best customer experience strategy? We hope that this overview created by boostCX will highlight how you can improve the customer experience with the right strategy.

How To Build Customer Experience Management Strategies

In a customer-focused world, it is critical that you implement a robust customer experience management (CXM) strategy. It's essential for business survival and growth. A well-defined and well thought out strategy helps ensure that all customer interactions are purpose driven, positive, and aligned with your brand values.

Here are several key steps to building a customer experience management strategy:

1. Understand Your Customers: Use data to create customer portfolios and classifications, and map out their journeys to better identify customer needs, pain points, and expectations at every touchpoint.
2. Define Your Customer Experience Goals: Create a clear vision and clear goals for your customer experience that align with your brand identity and overall business objectives. Set measurable goals for your strategies.
3. Collect Customer Feedback Consistently: Implement features and solutions (surveys, customer reviews, social listening, direct interactions) to collect customer feedback across multiple channels throughout the customer lifecycle.
4. Empower Your Employees: Give your teams the training, tools, knowledge, and authority they need to deliver exceptional experiences. Build  a customer-focused culture throughout your business.
5. Personalize Customer Interactions: Use customer data to tailor communications, offers, and support to individual customers. This makes customers feel valued.
6. Measure and Analyze Customer Experience Metrics: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) to monitor progress and identify areas for improvement.   
7. Act on Data: Use the customer feedback and data collected to make real improvements to processes, products, and services based on data not emotion. Customer experience management is a continuous cycle of learning and refinement.

Top 5 Most Effective Customer Experience Management Strategies

While the steps above outline how to build the framework for customer experience management, there are certain strategies that consistently prove effective in delivering quality customer experiences. Many of the customer experience management strategies listed below are not exclusive and work best when used together as parts of an overarching strategy.

• Provide Consistent Omnichannel Experiences: Focus on delivering a consistent, and integrated customer experience across all channels and touchpoints with your business, whether digital or physical.
• Employ Data-Driven Hyper-Personalization: Use customer data, analytics, and AI-powered solutions to deliver personalized and relevant experiences for your customers that can include product recommendations, offers, and individual communications.
• Provide Proactive Customer Service and Support: Go beyond reactive problem-solving and your customers’ needs. Offer assistance before customers ask and address potential issues before they escalate by using predictive analytics and timely alerts.
• Empower Employees and Build a Customer-Focused Culture: Invest heavily in training, equipping, and empowering employees - especially customer-facing staff - to own the customer experience and make decisions that prioritize customer satisfaction and are supported by a customer-first mindset.
• Create a Continuous Feedback and Improvement Loop: Build a robust system for collecting customer feedback in real-time, analyzing it for potential insights, and implement changes and improvements quickly to the customer journey.

‍READ MORE: Top 5 Challenges in Customer Experience Management 

What is the best customer experience management strategy? The real answer is - it may be different from one business to the next - and an overall plan may involve multiple customer experience management strategies. The key is understanding your customers, empowering employees to deliver an excellent experience, and adapting to changing customer expectations with continuous feedback and improvement.

Contact boostCX for a demo of our customer experience management platform and establish your own strategy for success!

When you examine customer experience management (CXM), it is critical that you understand customer loyalty. Net Promoter Score (NPS) may be the most widely adopted Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for measuring customer loyalty.

NPS quantifies a customer's willingness to recommend your company, product, or service to a friend or colleague, based on their response to a single question - On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend? This simple metric helps businesses categorize customers into Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), and Detractors (0-6) based on their responses and provides a clear indicator of overall sentiment and potential for growth.

When you go more in-depth into this KPI, understanding the differences between Transactional and Relational Net Promoter Scores is a key to better leveraging this powerful metric effectively across different aspects of your business.

Transactional NPS vs. Relational NPS

While both types of NPS measure customer loyalty, they serve distinct purposes and are implemented at different stages of the customer journey:

• Relational NPS (rNPS): This type of NPS survey is designed to measure a customer's overall loyalty and satisfaction with your company or brand as a whole. In most cases, it is conducted at regular intervals, such as quarterly or annually, or after a significant period of customer loyalty. Relational NPS provides a high-level view of the long-term health of your customer relationships and perception of your brand.
• Transactional NPS (tNPS): By comparison, Transactional NPS measures customer satisfaction and loyalty immediately after a specific interaction, transaction, or customer touchpoint. This could be after a purchase, a customer service call, an online order, a product installation, or a visit to your retail store. tNPS is an event-based metric and provides immediate, in-depth feedback on specific experiences your customers have had.

Why You Should Track Relational NPS?

Relational NPS offers a broader, more comprehensive view of customer loyalty and the overall health of your brand. It can measure long-term customer sentiment and can be a strong predictor of future business growth, customer churn, and customer lifetime value. Here is a better look at a few key reasons you should consider tracking Relational NPS:

• Gauge Overall Brand Loyalty: rNPS measures the strength of the customer's entire relationship with your brand, not a single interaction, and reflects cumulative experiences. Annual Relational NPS surveys help to understand overall customer loyalty and track how it is trending year-over-year.
• Predict Future Growth and Customer Churn: Higher Relational NPS scores can correlate with increased customer retention, more repeat purchases, and a higher number of positive referrals, which all point to long-term growth. A subscription-based streaming service could track Relational NPS quarterly and gain insight on declining trends that can signal an increased risk of customer churn.
• Make Strategic Decisions: This data helps identify broad areas for strategic focus to improve the overall customer relationship, brand perception, and long-term strategy. A car manufacturer might use Relational NPS feedback to understand how its brand is perceived overall and use the data to influence long-term product development and marketing strategies.
• Benchmark Against Competitors: Relational NPS is a common metric for businesses and it can allow for general benchmarking against competitors to help understand your position in terms of customer loyalty. A tech company might compare its Relational NPS to published industry averages to see how its overall customer loyalty stacks up.

Why You Should Track Transactional NPS?

Transactional NPS offers immediate and specific insights that are valuable in identifying and addressing key pain points in the customer journey. It allows businesses to quickly and easily pinpoint operational strengths and weaknesses, and allows them to make data-driven improvements to the customer journey. Here is a closer look at reasons why you may want to track Transactional NPS:
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• Pinpoint Specific Issues: Transactional NPS helps identify exactly where in the customer journey things are going well or poorly and provides focused feedback. For example, a retail company can use tNPS after an online checkout and discover low scores are linked to a confusing step in the payment process and make improvements.
• Enable Quick Service Recovery: A low Transactional NPS score can provide immediate alerts and follow-up procedures with dissatisfied customers to resolve their issue quickly. A good example is that a software company's support team could contact a user who gave a low tNPS after a support chat to offer additional assistance and turn a negative experience into a positive one.
• Monitor Performance of Key Interactions: This KPI allows businesses to consistently track how well critical touchpoints - like product onboarding, a service call, or a delivery experience - are performing over time. Airlines could use tNPS after each flight to independently monitor satisfaction with the check-in process, in-flight service, and baggage handling.
• Empower Frontline Teams: Transactional NPS provides direct feedback to the teams that are responsible for specific customer interactions and help them understand their impact and identify areas for improvement. A hotel chain might share tNPS scores from post-stay surveys related to the check-in experience with their front desk staff to highlight opportunities for improvement.

‍READ MORE: How To Create a Net Promoter Score Survey

It is important to understand and recognize the differences and uses of transactional and relational NPS for your business. This data allows businesses to deploy a more complete and effective customer experience management strategy that will help promote long-term growth and success of your brand.

Contact boostCX for a demo of our customer experience management platform and find solutions that will help you track and analyze your Net Promoter Score!