5 Things Companies Must Do To Stay Engaged With Customers

By Ed Attanasio

They used to call it customer engagement, but now they should call it customer entanglement, because companies are more involved in their customers’ lives than ever.

Today, marketers are staying engaged indefinitely and as seamlessly as possible to keep their customers in the loop. Through social media, direct mail, online advertising, public relations, mobile apps and other channels, companies establish and maintain lifelong relationships with their customers and reap big rewards.

To keep the relationship going strong, businesses of all sizes need to think differently or be left behind. Here are five deliverables that must always be in the mind of any business that wants to attract customers.

Credit: Shutterstock

Let’s Listen More Closely

Developing effective tools to promote customer engagement is no longer simply a one-time thing, or something a company does quarterly or even monthly. Now you have to be in your customers’ minds all the time.

Let’s Devise a Plan

Simply periodically jumping in and out when it comes to your customer engagement efforts won’t work anymore. You need a well-designed strategy and a definitive plan, and to stick to it.

Every time you engage with your customers, have a clear goal in mind, whether it’s improving your product or adding benefits customers will want. Sixty-eight percent of Americans are willing to spend 13% more with companies providing superior customer service, according to Inc.com. This means all of your customer engagement endeavors must lead directly to some type of offer, decision or action, backed by a strategic approach.

Let’s Embrace More and More Mobility

More people use their personal devices to buy products and services online. Nearly 70% of all adults in the U.S. have a smartphone, and tablet computer ownership has edged up to 45%, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. If you are not engaging with your customers via their cell phones or tablets on a semi-regular basis, you’re still in medieval times.

To achieve this, marketers have researched and engaged with what their customers are doing, to stay ahead of trends and effectively identify fads, as well as to ride the former and discard the latter until the buzz begins to die down.

Companies always covet peerto-peer, one-on-one relationships. People love to share personal stories about products and services they like, and that’s the sweet spot every marketer wants to tap into.

By learning as much as you can through online reviews and social media, you can learn your customers’ habits quickly and respond promptly. Adapt or perish is the motto when it comes to customer engagement, and listening carefully is a vital part of that.

Let’s Develop 2-Way Relationships

If you truly want to stay engaged with your clients in an effective manner, treat them more like good friends instead of customers. Too many companies milk their customers dry with a different offer every other day. That’s overkill and you won’t won’t remain friends if you do it on a continual basis.

Your overall strategy shouldn’t be all about selling them something aggressively, but rather more about developing good friendships with your client base.

To this end, value all feedback you receive from your customers and share it with your team. If you’re listening to what your clients are saying about you, you can respond quickly and improve your products, services or processes if needed.

Pivoting is not just for Stephen Curry of the NBA companies must be ready to do it on the drop of a dime.

Let’s Make it Easily Accessible and Visible

There’s a whole big world out there when it comes to all of the different approaches to stay engaged and entangled with your customers for the long run.

In-product messaging, email, mobile, social media and customer care/support are the five leading ways companies can consistently achieve top-tier results. The ones that truly excel at it have figured out how to do it all well.

The role of any smart marketer is to provide its customers with the correct tools to enable easy and natural communication. You should always be easily available and visible, but you should also offer options for varied types of interactions.

If you can offer your clients an intuitive tool, rather than just a platform for communicating with you, they will take the reins and do the rest themselves.

Financing a new or used vehicle is growing more expensive than ever for consumers, according to the car shopping experts at Edmunds. New data from Edmunds reveals:

Interest rates are continuing to rise. The average annual percentage rate (APR) on new financed vehicles climbed to 6.5% in Q4 2022 compared to 5.7% in Q3 2022 and 4.1% in Q4 2021. The APR on used financed vehicles climbed to 10% in Q4 2022 compared to 9% in Q3 2022 and 7.4% in Q4 2021.

A greater share of consumers are committing to monthly payments of $1,000 or more. 15.7% of consumers who financed a new vehicle in Q4 2022 committed to a monthly payment of $1,000 or more—the highest it’s ever been— compared to 10.5% in Q4 2021 and 6.7% in Q4 2020. 5.4% of consumers who financed a used vehicle in Q4 2022 committed to a $1,000+ monthly payment—also a record high—compared to 3.9% in Q4 2021 and 1.5% in Q4 2020.

Consumers are putting more money down on their purchases to offset rising costs. The average down payment for new and used vehicles hit record highs in Q4 2022, climbing to $6,780 and $3,921, respectively.

A growing share of luxury shoppers are turning their backs on leasing and choosing to on financing---which is the vast majority of car shoppers,” said Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ director of insights. “Although the last quarter of the year typically skews toward luxury vehicle purchases, this nearrecord percentage of vehicles that are being purchased rather than leased reflect tougher market conditions far more than affluent consumers shelling out a bit more than usual to treat themselves over the holiday season.” purchase instead. Edmunds data reveals that new-vehicle lease penetration dropped to 16% in Q4 2022, compared to 29% in Q4 2019. Luxury new-vehicle lease penetration dropped to 26% in Q4 2022, compared to 53% in Q4 2019.

“Just as new and used car prices finally started to cool off in Q4, rapidly rising interest rates created an even greater barrier to entry for consumers who rely

Edmunds analysts caution the combination of costlier vehicle financing and cooling used car values could spell trouble for some consumers down the road if they do not budget or plan accordingly. Edmunds experts conducted a deeper dive into the share of new vehicle sales with a trade-in that had negative equity in Q4 2022, which reveals:

17.4% of new vehicle sales with a trade-in had negative equity in Q4 2022, compared to 14.9% in Q4 2021 and 31.5% in Q4 2020.

The average amount owed on upside-down loans was $5,341 in Q4 2022 compared to $4,141 in Q4 2021 and $5,059 in Q4 2020.

“Vehicle equity is really a tale of two gears for consumers over the past few years,” said Drury. “At the onset of the pandemic, consumers benefited from low interest rates and elevated trade-in values, helping shield even the more questionable financing decisions from resulting in negative equity. This unique confluence of market forces resulted in some vehicle owners being able to take advantage of positive equity on their loans and even their leases. But as we shifted toward an environment with diminished used car values and rising interest rates over the past few months, consumers have become less insulated from those riskier loan decisions, and we are only seeing the tip of the negative equity iceberg.”

As a 2023 resolution, consumers may benefit from resolving to more closely monitor their vehicles’ values so they are not shocked to find out later about potential significant negative equity.

Source: Edmunds

Pump Prices Creep Higher Amid January Doldrums

By Andrew Gross AAA

The short days and messy weather of January are combining to keep people off the roads, lowering gasoline demand. But the price of oil rose as fears of a global economic recession eased.

The national average for a gallon of gas rose by five cents over the previous week to $3.32 as of Jan. 17.

“Gasoline demand is usually lackluster this time of year,” said Andrew Gross, AAA spokesperson, “and it likely won’t start to tick up until spring break draws near. So the primary factor in this latest increase is the higher cost of oil, which accounts for more than half of what you pay at the pump.”

According to data from the Energy Information Administration, gas demand total domestic gasoline stocks rose from 222.7 million bbl to 226.8 million bbl. Flat gasoline demand and increased supply are contributing to limited pump price increases.

The Jan. 17 national average of $3.32 is 17 cents more than a month ago and a penny more than a year ago.

The nation’s top 10 largest weekly increases: Colorado (+32 cents), Georgia (+30 cents), Indiana (+17 cents), Nebraska (+13 cents), Wyoming (+12 cents), Illinois (+10 cents), New Mexico (+10 cents), Texas (+9 cents), Washington, D.C. (+7 cents) and Utah (+7 cents).

The nation’s top 10 most expensive markets: Hawaii ($4.98), California ($4.42), Washington ($4.00), Nevada ($3.94), Alaska ($3.71), Oregon ($3.68), Pennsylvania ($3.64), Washington, D.C. ($3.53), Illinois ($3.52) and New York

Ford F-Series Is Best-Selling Truck For 46th Consecutive Year

Ford F-Series will surpass 640,000 trucks in 2022, making it America’s bestselling truck for 46 consecutive years and America’s bestselling vehicle for 41 years after selling an average of at least one F-Series Truck every 49 seconds in 2022.

From F-150 to F-550 chassis cab, entry level XL to well-equipped Limited, EcoBoost to the all-electric F-150 Lightning, lined bumper to bumper, all of the Ford F-Series trucks sold last year would stretch approximately 2,400 miles, or further than the driving distance from Los Angeles to Detroit.

“The Ford truck team’s ability to anticipate customer needs, continuously innovate and provide best-in-class levels of capability and performance has helped make F-Series the sales leader time and time again,” said Kumar Galhotra , president, Ford Blue. “We’re honored and humbled that our customers have helped

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F-Series celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2023 and continues to set the tone for innovation, leading the industry with the allelectric F-150 Lightning, which began sales in 2022 and immediately became the best-selling EV pickup on the market. Furthermore, the allnew F-Series Super Duty, with ground-breaking capability and features, has racked up an incredible 150,000 orders, further cementing F-Series as the truck of choice for heavy-duty truck buyers. First deliveries start early this year.

With Maverick, Ranger, F-150, Super Duty, all the way up to F-750, Ford offers America’s broadest lineup of trucks to best deliver on the needs of customers and is the only one that is Built Ford Tough.

S ource: Ford

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