Customer Engagement

The term "engagement", probably the biggest buzzword to hit business this century, was originally coined to describe employees, roughly approximating the notion of motivation. It's now used incredibly often with reference with customers.

It's assumed (not proved, but assumed) that customer engagement, like employee engagement is a "good thing", but the concept is often so ill defined that it either means nothing, or isn't such a great thing after all.

We need to ask the question: "What are our customers engaged WITH?" in order to profit from thinking engagement. For example, if customers in a store, or a website, spend time playing games on computers, or engrossed in activities that are unlikely to create sales, then they become overhead. Customer engagement only makes sense if one can link what they are engaged with to sales.

On websites this is particularly the case. Usually engagement is measured by how often customers interact (with each other), or how long they spend on a particular site. Sites with lots of interaction or where people spend lots of time on are said to encourage and create customer engagement. But the idea is wrong. It's as wrong as saying we should make restaurants where people are engaged so well, that they stay for hours. That might, and does work in bars, but doesn't work with restaurants that need to turn over their tables to be profitable.

WIth that said, here are other views on customer engagement.

All About Customer Engagement