Customer engagement for manufacturing companies

Customer engagement for the manufacturing industry involves getting your customers enthusiastic about your brand, making sure they want to know about your latest offerings, talk about your brand and products in their circle and community forums, and can even lead to them coming up with product hacks and tips.

All this starts with some effort from your side like ensuring all the information they need is readily accessible, helping them with their purchase, providing assistance in making the best use of your product with product guides and live chat, supporting them in any way they need, and even contacting them proactively when their service is due.

With its origin tracing back to the late 18th century, manufacturing industries have been historically slow at adapting to modern practices. Their over-dependence on complex, outdated legacy systems made it immune to change. Unlike e-commerce or other services, the manufacturing industry doesn't have an element of glamour attached to it.

In addition, their product's cost is high, and their sales cycle is pretty long.

To nullify these and other limitations, the manufacturing industry is starting to shed its old skin and see the potential of treating its customers right.

• Beyond just selling: Nowadays, it's not just about selling a product. The world has evolved to expect more because of our technological advancements. Only by constantly engaging with customers can manufacturing industries differentiate themselves from their competitors and build trust with them. The trust-building helps them build loyal followers around their brand.
• Loyal customer base: Building such a loyal base can help in other aspects such as word-of-mouth marketing, testimonials to attract potentials, etc. Unlike other services, the lifecycle of manufactured products is long, and customers usually stay with the brand for life when they're offered a great experience.
• Reduce churn: In the long-term, an attentive customer engagement strategy will help the manufacturing industries retain their customers and reduce churn.
• Service after sales: In manufacturing industries, customers usually return to them for service assistance. When treated right, it's a gold mine that generates 39% more margin than a new sale².

It's everyone. As we discussed, customer engagement is about delivering a uniform, connected experience irrespective of the department in any organization. Only by breaking the silos existing between the multiple departments can customer engagement strategies be implemented.

Manufacturing industries cannot do a one-time campaign to excite and engage with their customers and expect them to stay for life. A well-planned strategy should be implemented day-in and day-out to improve customer engagement.

• Personalization is the key: 80% of customers are more likely to purchase when provided a personalized experience³.To improve customer engagement, add a pint of personalized content at every point of your interaction.
• Enabling self-service: Websites of manufacturing industries are not visitor-friendly. It's the nature of the industry. Since 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative⁴, facilitating easy access and self-servicing options would improve customer engagement.
• Collaterals to improve customer engagement: Since their sales cycle is long, manufacturing industries can use the opportunity to engage with customers and teach them what their products can do. Instead of always pitching the product, manufacturing industries can use their collaterals to make them realize why they need to buy their products.
• Arming support executives: Customers of the manufacturing industries would spend a considerable time interacting with your support executives. Hence, empowering the support team with the perfect tools and resources would help them improve customer engagement and their overall experience with you.

Although everyone is responsible, the engagement management team brings together the customers and the organizations. They go between them to exchange feedback and updates to ensure consistency is maintained across the organization and the customers are satisfied.

Zoho SalesIQ, the engagement intelligence tool, promotes an all-around customer engagement with its live chat and analytics features for your marketing, sales, and support teams.

Customer experience (CX) is how your customers feel when they see, understand, and interact with your product. In a meta sense, CX also includes how your customers feel about your product even when they're not using it.

In the manufacturing industry, good customer experience includes ensuring prospects and customers can find accurate stock levels in your product catalog, helping them find the right product for their needs, ensuring they know how to make the best use of your product, and making after-sales support a breeze.

Check out our recent blog post on how to improve customer experience in the manufacturing industry

Given today's intense competition and the options available to customers, manufacturing companies can't just rely on industry demand for sustained sales. Especially with the higher order volumes and cost associated with the manufacturing industry, customers will have numerous questions answered before committing to a purchase. Live chat software not only makes it possible for manufacturing companies to let customers reach out easily, answer their questions, and provide timely after-sales support to increase sales and retain customers, it also helps scale manufacturing businesses' live chat operation without the need for a proportional workforce with chatbots.

Check out our recent blog post to learn how to improve your manufacturing business with Zoho SalesIQ's live chat.