Customer engagement vs customer experience: though frequently used interchangeably in marketing, they share a common goal of enhancing loyalty.
However, they are not the same.
While related, customer engagement and customer experience originate from different perspectives: customer engagement is driven by marketers’ initiatives, whereas customer experience is shaped by the perceptions and interactions of the end customer.
In this blog, we will explore customer engagement vs customer experience, how they differ, and how each plays a crucial role in enhancing customer engagement marketing strategies.
What is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is about engaging customers across multiple channels and touchpoints to establish a relationship. It’s about genuinely listening to your customers, deeply understanding their needs and preferences, and responding effectively to their feedback to strengthen the connection.
Effective customer engagement relies heavily on deeply understanding the customer journey and experience. As a marketer, you can identify where customers are in their journey and the touchpoints they interact with. This information allows you to tailor your messaging and offers, ensuring a personalized and uninterrupted experience for each customer. This deliberate approach strengthens relationships and boosts customer loyalty.
However, this is not a one-time activity. Customer engagement is a continuous process. You must constantly engage with your customers to sustain and ensure customer loyalty. Regularly engaging with them ensures that customers feel valued and connected to your brand over time.
For example, if a customer completes a purchase from your brand, instead of just sending a confirmation email or invoice, consider creating a drip marketing campaign such as emails, sending them SMS or WhatsApp messages about how to use your product, best practices, new launches, and more.
Such personalized interactions lead to positive customer experiences that aid in creating long-lasting relationships.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience is a broader term that encompasses the overall aspect of customer interactions with your brand. It includes all touchpoints your customers have, including engagement, but also encompasses factors such as product, service quality and customer service during and post-purchase.
While brands focus on implementing customer engagement strategies, the true differentiator among competitors is increasingly the customer experience. In fact, 74% of consumers are likely to make purchases based solely on the experience they receive. Consider how focusing on customer experience can forge enduring relationships with your customers, setting your brand apart in a crowded market.
If you have an app or a website, consider creating a user-friendly interface, creating personalized boutique pages, having a smooth user onboarding strategy, using contextual nudges to prompt and guide users through the website.
Such experiences are bound to exceed expectations, create more aha moments, and boost customer lifetime value and profitability.
Customer Engagement vs Customer Experience: The Differences
Now that we’ve set the stage with the basics, the table below highlights the crucial distinctions between customer engagement and customer experience, laying out the fundamental differences in a visual format for clearer understanding.
| Factor | Customer Engagement | Customer Experience |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Involves the ongoing interactions with customers across multiple touchpoints. | Involves the overall perception customers have about your brand. It evaluates how customers perceive their entire experience, from the initial contact to the post-purchase phase. |
| Scope | Focused on deepening and sustaining customer relationships. It assesses the extent and variety of customer interactions with a brand. | Encompasses a broader perspective, addressing all customer interactions and perceptions throughout their journey. |
| Measurement & Metrics | Conversion rate, churn rate, customer lifetime value are some of the popular metrics to measure. | These use both qualitative and quantitative data to measure. Qualitative methods include surveys and feedback. Quantitative methods include NPS score, customer satisfaction score. |
| Goals & objectives | Focus on creating sustainable relationships and loyalty among customers, thereby encouraging repeat business. | Enhance customer satisfaction and foster positive perceptions by effectively meeting their needs and expectations. |
| Timeframe | Focuses more on shorter timeframe like day-to-day activities at every touchpoint in the lifecycle. | Longer timerframe, focusing more on customer actions in the overall journey, from consideration to advocacy. |
Customer Engagement Example
Danube Homes, a leading home improvement and furnishing retail brand with over 50,000 products across 16 categories, was looking at improving conversions and revenue through better customer engagement.
They were facing challenges like
- Abandoned cart
- Lack of targeting and re-targeting strategy
- No channel-wise approach to connecting with customers
They sought to partner with a platform that could run targeted marketing automation for each customer throughout their purchasing journey.
After integrating a customer engagement platform, they were equipped to design and implement campaigns and journeys tailored to each stage of the customer’s buying process. This platform enabled them to automate interactions across multiple channels, ensuring a more personalized approach to engaging all customers effectively.
With campaigns like push notifications, emails and WhatsApp marketing set up, they were able to nudge their customers into buying and completing purchases through triggered campaigns.
After the campaigns were executed, the home furnishing brand saw an astonishing 45% uplift in their overall revenue and a 200% growth in retention rate.
Customer Experience Example
FabIndia, an Indian ecommerce brand, has multiple categories of products ranging from ethnic wear to home decorations.
They were looking to create a better user experience on their website to boost conversions and sales.
With the help of Netcore’s customer engagement platform, they created personalized recommendations page on their homepage, based on their visitors past behaviors and purchases.
They took it one step further and also created tailored discount offers on products that users prefer based on the data gathered from customers.
They also made sure to keep customers informed about their carts, encouraging them to complete purchases by reaching out across various touchpoints, including emails, WhatsApp, and push notifications.
Experiences like these showcase a brand’s dedication to ensuring a seamless shopping experience, enhancing customer perceptions positively. By actively engaging in such personalized outreach, brands can significantly improve customer lifetime value and foster loyalty and advocacy, creating lasting relationships.
Conclusion
It’s crucial to develop both a robust customer engagement strategy and ensure a positive customer experience.
While these concepts are closely linked, they are distinct. Customer engagement is about creating ongoing interactions and nurturing relationships. Conversely, customer experience focuses on customers’ perceptions of these interactions, emphasizing a seamless journey across all channels.
No matter the industry you work in, if you strike a balance between the two concepts, you are bound to achieve long-term success.
