Figuring out how engaged your customers really are with your brand is crucial. However, calculating an accurate customer engagement score takes some work.
But, lucky for you, we’re here to help you out.
Read on to learn the step-by-step formula for calculating your customer engagement score, as well as some actionable tips to take it even further.
We’ll cover:
- What is the customer engagement score (CES)?
- How to calculate the engagement score formula
- Actionable tips to make sure your customers stay engaged
Let’s get started.
What is the customer engagement score (CES)?
The CES measures how actively customers interact with your brand.
It basically gives you insights into engagement levels using actual data! It's calculated based on things such as:
- How often customers visit your website or social media
- How long they spend browsing
- How many purchases they make
- How likely they are to recommend you to others
Highly engaged customers tend to stick around longer and spend more. Plus, increasing customer engagement by just 5% can boost profits by up to 95%!
Now that's some serious motivation.
The customer engagement score formula
So you want to know how engaged your customers are?
Lucky for you, there’s a customer engagement score formula:
Customer Engagement Score (CES) = (Weight 1 * Frequency 1) + (Weight 2 * Frequency 2) + (Weight 3 * Frequency 3) + ...
- Pick your metrics well: Choose the key actions or behaviors that indicate customer engagement for your specific business. These might include website visits, purchases, social media interactions, email open rates, or customer support interactions.
- Assign weights: Not all metrics are created equal. Give each metric a weight based on its importance to your business goals. For example, a purchase might carry more weight than a social media like.
- Track frequency: Keep tabs on how often each customer performs the chosen actions. This will give you a clear picture of their engagement levels over time.
- Tally up event value: For each customer and each action, multiply the weight of that action by how often they've done it. This will give you the event value for that specific action.
- Calculate total score: Add up all the event values for each customer to determine their individual customer engagement score. This number represents their overall engagement level.
Pro tip: Remember to segment your customers based on their scores (high, medium, low). This will help you tailor your marketing and communication efforts to each group's specific needs and preferences.
Tips to improve your customer engagement score
Now that we’ve established the importance of the customer engagement score, you know that if you improve that score, then you’ll boost loyalty, retention, and word-of-mouth marketing. No sweat, right?
Get personal
Personalize your interactions with customers to make them feel valued and understood.
Remember to make personalization a priority across all channels:
- Good old emails: Insert the recipient's name and personal details in the subject lines and signatures.
- Every social media channel under the sun: Like and comment on customers' posts to show you’re actually paying attention.
- Don’t forget your website: Offer personalized recommendations based on browsing history and past purchases.
- Customer support — with a memory: Refer to previous purchases and issues when assisting customers again.
Chat them up
Live chat and messaging are must-have customer engagement channels today. Customers expect to be able to reach businesses quickly and easily, so deploying chat options can boost your CES in a few ways.
Here’s how:
- Total immediacy: Chat responses are near-instant, so customers feel their needs are a top priority.
- “Just for you”: Chat conversations are often more personal and casual than phone or email.
- Faster ticket resolution: Many customer questions and concerns can be resolved in a single chat, improving satisfaction.
- Learn all about your customers: Chat transcripts provide a record of customer interactions, pain points, and preferences to help personalize future engagements.
Reward your regulars
Loyalty programs are a proven way to improve customer engagement. By rewarding your most engaged customers, you encourage them to interact with your brand even more.
Here are some important things to consider for your loyalty program:
- Make it simple: The program should be easy to understand and use. Avoid complex tiers and rules that confuse customers.
- Offer rewards your clients will love: Customers want rewards that they actually want, like discounts, free products, or VIP experiences.
- Be clear about it: Explain how the program works and the benefits of participating up front.
- Make them feel seen: Tailor rewards and communications based on individual customers' preferences and purchase histories.
- Automate tracking: Use technology to track customer interactions and spending to trigger rewards automatically.
- Show some love: Thank loyal customers for their ongoing support and let them know how much their business means to you.
Promote interaction
Social media engagement is a powerful driver of customer engagement. Encourage your customers to interact with your brand's social profiles in the following ways:
- Post helpful, useful, and interesting content regularly: Provide tips, how-to guides, industry news, and behind-the-scenes looks to give customers a reason to follow your brand.
- Ask questions and run contests to incentivize comments and replies: Questions related to customers' needs and pain spots work particularly well.
- Respond to customer comments and messages quickly: Aim to respond to as many client comments as possible within one business day.
- Thank customers for their feedback — even if it’s not what you wanted to hear: Showing you value all customer input builds trust.
- Cross-promote social content: The more people who see your social posts, the more potential for engagement, so promote it in emails and other channels.
- Monitor and respond to customer conversations about your brand: If customers are discussing an issue publicly, respond respectfully and offer solutions.
Offer targeted promotions and incentives
Promotions and incentives can be a powerful way to encourage customers to engage more with your brand.
To make sure these offers actually boost your customer engagement score, think about these:
- Promotions should feel like they’re personal: Target promotions to specific customer segments based on their past purchases, behaviors, and preferences. This shows customers you know and understand them.
- Relevance matters: Only offer promotions for products or services that are actually relevant to the customer. Basically, customers won't engage with offers that don't match their needs.
- Strike while the iron’s hot: Send promotions at opportune times, like after a customer hasn't purchased in a while or during a slow period. The timing can impact how customers perceive and respond to the offer.
- It needs to be worth their time: Make sure the promotion actually provides value to the customer in exchange for their engagement. If your customers view the promo as trivial or meaningless, you can bet your bottom dollar that they won’t like it.
- Make them feel a little pressed for time: Limited-time or exclusive offers give promotions that "special" feeling that entices customers to engage. This scarcity can increase customer excitement and response rates.
Foster a community around your brand
Building a thriving community around your brand can be one of the most effective ways to increase customer engagement and loyalty.
Here are some tips to foster a strong customer community:
- Provide a place for community interaction: Whether it's an online forum, social media group, or in-person meetups, give customers a dedicated place to connect with each other.
- Establish common interests and goals: Find shared interests or goals that can unite customers and motivate them to participate and engage. This could be things like a love for the product or service you offer or simply shared experiences.
- Make participation a rewarding affair: You can do this by thanking active community members publicly, offering community-exclusive perks and discounts, and even highlighting user-generated content and success stories.
- Help your customers talk to each other: Provide places for customers to connect with each other, like forums, social media groups, and review sites. Encourage them to share advice, tips, and experiences.
- Events are a chance for people to get together: Both online and offline events bring customers together to socialize and learn from each other. This could be anything from webinars to meetups to brand celebrations.
- Empower people with shared goals: Give the community a joint mission or challenge that they can work towards together. This could be raising funds for a cause, collaborating on a project, or achieving a milestone.
- Recognize community members: Thank influential community members and highlight their contributions. This shows the community that you value their engagement and participation.
- Say “Hi” to new members: Reach out to new community members to make them feel included. This could be a personal message, gift, or invitation to an event.
Summing up
Calculating your customer engagement score takes some work, but it's worth it. In fact, it’s worth it so much that no business worth its salt would let this score dip.
So, it’s time to get cracking: crunch those numbers and make your customers feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
The more you listen to your customers, the higher your score will climb.
Next steps
Tired of manually calculating and analyzing customer engagement scores? Lindy can help you bring customer engagement scores up.
Here's how Lindy can help:
- Getand analyze data effortlessly: Lindy automatically tracks and analyzes customer interactions across multiple channels, providing you with a comprehensive view of your engagement metrics.
- Segment your customers for personalized outreach: Lindy can help you identify different customer segments based on their engagement levels, allowing you to tailor your communication and marketing efforts to their specific needs and interests.
- Automate personalized interactions: Lindy can send targeted messages, recommendations, and offers to customers based on their individual preferences and behaviors, fostering stronger relationships and boosting engagement.
- Monitor social media engagement: Lindy can track your brand's social media mentions, sentiment, and engagement levels, giving you insights into how customers perceive your brand and what they're saying about it.
- All-in-one solution: Lindy handles a wide array of tasks, from customer support and lead generation to sales and beyond, allowing you to focus on your core business.
- Simple setup, no tech skills needed: Getting started with Lindy is a breeze, requiring no technical expertise or complex configurations.
- Seamless integration with your existing tools: Lindy effortlessly integrates with over 3,000 popular platforms and apps.
- Always-on availability for uninterrupted support: Lindy never sleeps, providing round-the-clock assistance to your customers and potential leads.
- Human escalation for complex issues: Lindy intelligently recognizes when a human touch is needed, ensuring a seamless customer experience.
- Adapts to your brand voice: Train Lindy to communicate in your brand's unique tone and style, delivering a consistent and personalized experience.
- Continuous learning and improvement: Lindy leverages your feedback and interactions to continuously enhance its performance, ensuring you always get the best results.
