What is customer engagement?

The customer engagement It is the customer’s commitment to a brand, service or product. How can you benefit from digital tools?

To understand the situation of customer engagement in Latin America, I talked with Raul Rincon, Senior Vice President for Latin America at Twilio. Raúl, who is a graduate of the University of Washington, has over 30 years of experience in international sales, marketing and operations. Additionally, he has developed strategies in both new and existing territories in Latin America and Southern Europe.

Twilio was founded in 2008, in San Francisco, California. It currently has 8,000 collaborators, throughout 23 countries. Among the solutions it offers, there is a platform that comes pre-integrated with channels such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, voice calls, email.

— How can you define customer engagement?

—Customer engagement is how companies communicate with their customers and vice versa. has to be way effective Y satisfactory. How do you want to communicate with the company that is giving you a service and how do you want them to communicate with you?

—What can we learn from the interactions between the client and the brand through digital media?

—More than the internet as a medium, what can we learn from interaction on mobile devices (the cellular network)? has changed the way we communicate and what we demand as clients of the companies with which we do business. What we have learned and must continue to learn is about that customer demand.

If we think about 20 years ago, customer service was in a personal way, because you went to the bank, the airline or wherever or you resorted to a phone call. That brought long waits on the phone or long waits in line, you had to take a turn, they treated you badly. And the only option was to return the next day in the hope that someone else would attend to you.

The digital world has demanded better customer service. And better not only in speed, but in that they solve the problems in a satisfactory way towards the service or product that I am buying. This requirement continues to be greater every day, companies have to improve the way they serve, provide more customer service channels. Who rules now is the end customer, the end user.

—In terms of customer engagement, what differences are there between Latin America and developed countries?

— There is still a difference in favor of developed countries. The United States in most industries has improved tremendously. The way in which, for example, they serve you at Home Depot is exceptional or even the airlines that have that reputation for poor service have improved a lot.

However, what I have seen is that that gap, that gap, in how we are treated in Latin America is shrinking. Customer service in Latin America has improved a lot. I just had a conversation with the co-founder of Nu Bank in Brazil, Cristina Junqueira and she says that they are not a bank, that they are a technology and finance company dedicated and focused on the client, on the human being. As they concentrate the human being, they greatly improve customer service.

Although Latin America is improving, they still have to work to be at the levels of the top companies worldwide. In general terms, the companies that have been born “digital-first” like Nu Bank or Kavak start with a different communication. They have more channels for customer service and are based on the internet.

— How can customer engagement be improved?

— There are several things to do and I love the question. It is common for companies to think that improving customer engagement means important investments and this is not the case, especially today.

What I recommend is the following:

1. While more communication channels with the client is better (for example: through an app, WhatsApp, telephone).
2. Have a repository of frequently asked questions and answers published on your website (FAQS) and continually improving it.
3. Personalize communication. Currently it can be done through big data, obviously respecting the privacy of each consumer.

— How is customer engagement measured?

— If the customer contacts the company to solve the problems, you can measure what is called “fix it on the first call” (first call resolution). Although we must clarify that “call” is not precisely by voice, but an interaction. On the other hand, satisfaction surveys, although many people do not answer them, with those who do, companies can have indications of where to improve. And finally you can measure the cost of acquiring a customer and the cost of keeping that customer. These are two important costs that companies should measure. Based on all that, you can measure and improve the interaction with customers.

Lastly, I must add that something has been happening in Latin America in recent years, related to entrepreneurship and the digital native companies that are emerging in our countries. Who would have imagined, outside of an oil company or outside of a bank, a Mexican company expanding throughout Latin America, like Kavak for example, or a food delivery company born in Colombia like Rappi? We are experiencing a very beautiful and important moment in Latin America, for entrepreneurship, for developers, for engineers who are founding companies and are changing the way we do business. That’s why customer service has improved a lot.

“This is not finding oil in our countries, this is something else.”

Mexico data on the latest Twilio study related to Customer Engagement “State of Customer Engagement Report”

• The study indicates that Mexico is the third country with the highest index in the highest levels of digital customer engagement of the countries surveyed.
• 9 out of 10 B2C companies in Mexico state that personalization is “extremely” or “very” important to their customer acquisition strategy.
• Mexican B2C companies forecast that 69% of their customer engagement will be digital by 2025.
• Investments in digital customer acquisition generated an increase in revenue of up to 91% for companies in Mexico.

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