How to Increase Customer Engagement in the Digital Age

Introduction

In today’s highly digitalized world, engaging with your audience online is more critical than ever. Digital engagement refers to the ongoing interactions between brands and their customers across various online platforms, from social media to email marketing. It is not just about generating traffic, but about creating meaningful relationships that encourage loyalty and retention.
With so many businesses vying for attention online, a well-executed digital engagement strategy can help set your brand apart. This article outlines the key strategies, tools, and trends shaping the future of digital engagement.

What is Digital Engagement?

Digital engagement encompasses the interactions between a brand and its audience through digital channels. These interactions include likes, comments, shares, email responses, clicks on a website, and more. It represents how engaged your customers are with your brand online.

Brands need to focus on creating a two-way conversation with their audience. Engagement goes beyond one-time interactions—it’s about building long-term relationships that lead to trust and loyalty. Whether through a company’s website, social media platforms, or email campaigns, digital engagement is crucial for sustained business success.

The Importance of Digital Engagement for Modern Businesses

For businesses today, simply having an online presence is not enough. Digital engagement plays a vital role in building customer relationships and driving conversions. When brands engage with their customers consistently, they strengthen their reputation, boost customer retention, and increase sales.

Engaging your audience digitally also provides you with valuable insights into customer preferences, helping to improve your products, services, and marketing strategies. Moreover, the more your audience interacts with your content, the more visibility you get across social platforms and search engines, further enhancing brand awareness.

Key Channels for Digital Engagement

Businesses have multiple avenues to connect with their audience, and knowing how to use these channels effectively is critical.

Social Media Platforms

Social media is one of the most powerful tools for digital engagement. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow businesses to connect with customers in real time. You can post content, respond to comments, and even run targeted ads to foster engagement.

Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a highly effective way to engage with your audience. Through personalized messages, offers, and newsletters, businesses can maintain regular communication with customers. Email campaigns that provide value can see high open and click-through rates, driving continued engagement.

Website Interaction

A company’s website is often the first point of contact with potential customers. An engaging, user-friendly website encourages visitors to explore, interact with content, and take action, whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or contacting customer support.

Digital Engagement Channel Behavior

Different communication channels exhibit distinct behaviors when integrated with Salesforce:

• SMS, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp: Messages can be sent at any time and are added to a queue. Agents respond to these messages when they come online. 
• Salesforce Chat: Requires real-time interaction, so agents must be online and available. Offline Support can be enabled to create a Case if no agents are available.
  Currently, the ownership of a chat conversation can only be changed once the chat has started.
  
  

Top Strategies to Boost Digital Engagement

To stand out online, businesses need a variety of strategies that actively foster engagement.

Create High-Value Content

Producing content that resonates with your audience is key. High-value content can take the form of blog posts, videos, infographics, or interactive quizzes. The more your audience finds your content helpful or entertaining, the more they will engage with it.

Leverage Influencer Marketing

Partnering with influencers in your industry is a smart way to boost engagement. Influencers already have an established audience that trusts their opinions. By collaborating with them, your brand can tap into a wider, more engaged customer base.

Use Interactive Tools

Interactive tools, like polls, quizzes, and calculators, encourage users to spend more time on your site or social media profiles. These tools not only entertain but also offer personalized value to the user, keeping them engaged.

Measuring the Success of Your Digital Engagement Efforts

Understanding the impact of your engagement efforts is crucial to refining your strategy.

Tracking Engagement Metrics

Metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates are key indicators of digital engagement. Monitoring these metrics helps you understand what types of content resonate most with your audience, allowing you to adjust your approach.

Understanding Customer Feedback

Customer feedback, whether through reviews, comments, or direct messages, offers invaluable insights into how your brand is perceived. Engaging with this feedback helps improve your overall engagement strategy and customer satisfaction.

Tools to Enhance Digital Engagement

Several tools can streamline and improve your digital engagement efforts.

Social Media Management Platforms

Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer help businesses manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts, and analyze engagement data. These platforms make it easier to stay consistent and active across various channels.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

CRM tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce can help businesses track customer interactions and personalize communication. A good CRM system allows businesses to create targeted marketing campaigns and better manage customer relationships.

Digital Engagement Features in Service Cloud

1) WhatsApp Integration

Engage with customers via WhatsApp directly from the Service Console. WhatsApp Business facilitates seamless communication, supporting customer care interactions and enabling businesses to send pre-approved notifications.

2) Facebook Messenger Integration

Utilize Facebook Messenger for customer support directly from your company’s Facebook page. Agents can respond efficiently through the Service Console after authenticating the Messenger channel.

3) Live Chat

Empower customers to initiate real-time chats with agents on your website or app. Agents can provide immediate responses within the console, while AI-powered chatbots enhance scalability by handling routine queries.

4) Einstein Bot

Deploy Einstein Bots to automate responses and gather preliminary information, allowing service agents to focus on resolving complex customer issues effectively.
Enhance customer engagement and streamline support operations with these powerful Digital Engagement features in Salesforce Service Cloud.

Triage Flows tool

In Service Cloud, ensuring efficient customer interactions and seamless data management are paramount. One effective tool for achieving this is leveraging Triage Flows—a custom process builder within Salesforce that guides service agents through linking conversations to relevant records, whether existing or new.
Triage Flows streamline the process of linking customer interactions (like cases or leads) to associated records such as accounts or contacts. Unlike manual methods, Triage Flows automate this task, improving accuracy and reducing agent workload.

Benefits of Triage Flows:

• Streamlined Workflow: Agents are guided step-by-step through predefined fields, ensuring consistent and accurate data entry.
  
• Efficiency Gains: By automating the linkage process, agents can focus more on resolving customer issues and less on administrative tasks.
  
• Customization: Triage Flows can be customized to align with specific business needs and workflows, enhancing operational efficiency.
• Integration with Standard Components: Triage Flows seamlessly integrate with standard Salesforce components like Related Record Components. This integration allows for a flexible approach to object linking, catering to diverse customer interaction scenarios.

   

Digital Engagement Bots

Each license includes 25 Bot conversations per month. Salesforce provides templates for Bots that can create Leads, Cases, look up existing Cases, or order records. Bots can handle customer queries on service channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, Chat, and SMS, escalating to an agent when necessary.

How to Configure Digital Engagement

Configuring Digital Engagement involves specific steps tailored to your selected channels. However, certain steps remain consistent across all setups.

1. Purchasing the License
Initially, ensure you’ve acquired the Digital Engagement license, as it’s not included in the standard Service Cloud License.

2. Enabling the Omni-Channel Tool
Omni-Channel plays a crucial role in Service Cloud, serving as the primary interface and operational hub for agents.

• Ensure that you’ve enabled the “Omni-Channel” checkbox.
  
  
• After enabling Omni-Channel, proceed to create a queue. A queue represents the team of agents responsible for managing incoming messages. When setting up a queue, include a Messaging Session object for digital platform support and/or a Chat Session for live chat assistance. Define the roles and users for the queue and then save your configuration.
  
  
• Navigate to Setup and search for “Presence Statuses”. Click on the New button.
  
  
• Create an Omni-Channel status with the ‘Available’ option to indicate readiness to accept requests. Include channels like Chat for web communication and Messaging for messenger services.
  
  
• Assign this status to an existing permission set or create a new one. In the permission set, open “Service Presence Status Access” and add the newly created status.
  
  
• Go to Setup and search for “Routing Configuration”. Create a new configuration.
  
• Enter a routing name, set priority, and configure other necessary fields.
  
  
• Assign this routing configuration to the previously created queue.
  
  
• Once these steps are completed, you’re ready to start using Omni-Channel.

3. Enabling Messaging:

• Navigate to Setup and search for “Messaging Settings”.
• Ensure that the Messaging toggle is switched on.
  Note: This feature requires the purchase of a Digital Engagement License.
  
  
• Once enabled, you can begin creating Messaging Channels.
  
  

Cost of Digital Engagement

Digital Engagement is an add-on product and requires an additional license for each user. Businesses using WhatsApp will also need WhatsApp credits, and they should consider additional costs for SMS conversations or Bot Conversations beyond the standard entitlements.

Service Cloud Editions and Digital Engagement Pricing

Choose your Service Cloud edition to begin leveraging Digital Engagement capabilities. Some editions include Digital Engagement by default, while others can easily add it at an accessible price point. For detailed Digital Engagement, download our comprehensive pricing guide.
Digital Engagement Reach customers across every digital channel.

• Price: $75 per user per month
  
  

Future Trends in Digital Engagement

As technology evolves, so do the ways businesses can engage with their audience. Emerging trends include the use of AI-powered chatbots, augmented reality experiences, and personalized content recommendations. Staying ahead of these trends will ensure that businesses remain competitive and relevant in an ever-changing digital landscape.

Summary

Salesforce Service Cloud Digital Engagement is a robust tool that, when paired with Reports and Dashboards, offers managers an audit trail and key metrics on customer interactions. While there are some limitations, such as restrictions on changing conversation ownership and searching through messages, ongoing updates promise continuous improvements. As Digital Engagement evolves, it will undoubtedly become even more integral to efficient and effective customer service operations.