ROSS SIBBALD | Talk to customers to navigate them through tough times

You don’t have to be an economist to notice that inflation is biting at the moment. You’ve probably felt it yourself, noticing how, every month, a little more of your salary goes into things like food and fuel. In fact, SA’s monthly inflation rate has consistently been above the upper limit of the Reserve Bank’s three to six percent target range since April last year, peaking at 7.8% in July. 

Those rising costs have a massive impact on consumers, especially those in the fragile, emerging middle class. Forced to tighten their belts, many consumers are taking a second look at their monthly budgets, wondering where to cut back. 

Organisations, particularly those in fields that might be considered grudge purchases (such as insurance), need to be aware of the inflationary pressures faced by their customers. More than that, however, they need to ensure that they’re engaging with those customers in ways that are not only cognisant of inflationary pressures, but also foster long-term loyalty and advocacy. 

Before getting into what such an approach might look like, it’s worth remembering that many organisations may be feeling these inflationary pressures themselves. And with a global recession now seemingly inevitable, they may be tempted to cut costs themselves. While it would be all too easy to cut back on customer engagement in a bid to save money, doing so would be a mistake. Now is not the time to wait until your customers find you before engaging with them. 

It’s when times are toughest that customer engagement really proves its worth. Remember, customer engagement is critical to building great customer experiences. While customer experience is a competitive differentiator in economically prosperous times, it can be a matter of survival when times are tough.    

Research does show that with rising inflation comes rising demand for great customer experiences. Given what we already know about people being willing to spend more with organisations that provide those experiences, it’s clear that it should be an even greater priority now. Taking any other approach would increase the risk of losing customers who either forgo a purchase entirely or opt for a competitor’s offering.

Knowing how important customer engagement is in providing those experiences, what kind of strategy should organisations adopt at a time of great economic pressure?

The first thing to remember is that customer engagement boils down to the relationship an organisation has with its customers. The best relationships are defined by trust and understanding. Building up that trust and understanding requires quality engagements that anticipate the customer’s needs and which are built up holistically. 

In order to start building up holistic customer engagements, organisations need to ensure that they really know and understand their customers. Organisations also need to ensure that they regularly show customers that they’re making an effort to know them.

Over time, and executed properly, those holistic and anticipatory add up to the kind of quality engagements that help set organisations apart when it comes to customer experience. And in a world where some 90% of organisations claim to compete on customer experience, that’s critical.

If your organisation is also on a lower budget, maximising engagement in this way might seem out of reach. But it’s actually entirely achievable. Even so, organisations are frequently better off finding a partner that can help guide them through the engagement process than they would be trying to do it themselves. 

Such a partner should have a strong track record of helping organisations pull together the right technologies, tools, and strategies to put together the kind of customer engagement approaches that set them apart from competitors.     

A good customer engagement partner will additionally help organisations simplify individualise, and maximise engagement across the board, making it easy for companies and their customers to engage meaningfully.

• Sibbald is a commercial director at Tilte