The importance of a digital customer engagement (DCE) strategy for organisations in Europe

PAC defines digital customer engagement (DCE) as the process of interacting with customers/clients/citizens through online and physical digital channels. This is supported by various back-end technology solutions and services spanning sales, commerce, marketing, content, customer experience, and customer service. DCE continues to evolve rapidly as organisations need to transform how they interact with customers, clients, or citizens through B2C, B2B, and G2C. It has become a crucial part of any business strategy in today’s digital landscape, and an organisation needs to have a strong DCE strategy in place. It is critically important because it allows organisations to provide personalised experiences across multiple touchpoints, thereby building long-lasting relationships and increasing engagement.

At PAC, our DCE research is focused on determining the trends, dynamics, and forces influencing the demands of organisations for solutions and services from vendors. This drives our market and vendor analysis at the heart of our DCE research cluster portfolio. PAC consider the iterative evolution of a DCE strategy to be of paramount importance, and the key components to implementing one successfully to be:

Know your audience: The first step in developing a digital customer engagement (DCE) strategy is understanding your audience. This involves creating personas, which are fictional representations of an organisation’s ideal customer, client, or citizen. By identifying their needs, pain points, and goals, an organisation can create content and messaging that resonates with them. This is achieved using various tools to gather information about customers/clients/citizens, including surveys, social media analytics, and website/application data. It’s also important to gather feedback from sales and customer service teams, who can provide insights into common questions and concerns.

Choose the right channels: Once an organisation has understood their audience, it should choose the digital channels that will be most effective for engaging with them. This could include social media platforms, telephony, email marketing, SMS messaging, or chatbots. It’s important to choose the channels that an organisation’s customers/clients/citizens prefer and that align with its goals.

Create engaging content: Once an organisation has identified the channels to be used for engagement, the next step is to create content that will resonate with the target audience. This could include status updates/notifications, blog posts, social media updates, email newsletters/updates, or video content. The key to creating engaging content is to focus on the needs and interests of customers/clients/citizens. DCE content should provide value, whether educational, informative, or entertaining. It’s also important to be consistent with messaging and branding so that the target audience recognises an organisation consistently across all channels.

Listen to feedback: Customer/client/citizen feedback is critical for building a strong relationship with an organisation’s audience. This includes positive and negative feedback, as both can provide insights into how an organisation can improve engagement. Feedback can be gathered through surveys, social media comments, or customer service interactions. It’s important to respond to feedback promptly and take action to address any concerns.

Personalise the experience: Personalization continues to increase in importance in digital customer engagement across all channels. Customers/clients/citizens expect organisations to understand their individual needs and preferences and to provide a customised experience. Organisations can personalise the experience using customer/client/citizen data to tailor messaging and recommendations. For example, if a customer has previously purchased a certain product, an organisation might recommend similar and adjacent products in the future.

Measure success: Finally, it’s essential to measure the success of the organisation’s digital customer engagement strategy. This involves tracking key metrics, such as website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and customer satisfaction. By analysing these metrics, an organisation can identify areas for improvement and adjust its strategy accordingly. Setting specific goals and tracking its progress toward achieving them is also important.