With 15% of the UK’s 40 largest websites by traffic volume being attributed to social networking sites, companies are increasingly turning to social media for customer engagement (Alexa.com, 2015; Peters et al, 2013). This seems like a good idea as companies can get their message out to a large audience at a low cost (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011; Vernuccio, 2014), but is this really an effective way to build customer relations?
This article examines Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel’s effectiveness at generating customer engagement using Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle.
Customer Engagement Cycle
Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle is built upon seven stages which aim to shape customer engagement. These are connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, commitment, advocacy and engagement. Customer engagement is the end goal and is defined by Sashi (2012) as the state where customers feel high levels of emotional attachment and rational reasons for loyalty, resulting in behaviour exhibiting brand advocacy and unconditional loyalty.
Figure One: Customer Engagement Cycle (Sashi, 2012)
Connection
Social media platforms facilitate the creation of one-click connections which can, in time, become relationships (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011). These connections allow organisations to direct messages to an audience of consumers who have registered interest through electing to ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ (Aichner and Jacob, 2015). Engage Mutual have direct connections to 1,591 followers (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015a), however, many of these are organisations themselves and therefore unlikely to be the target audience of Engage Mutual’s marketing activities. Despite this, connections with other organisations can act as endorsements and improve trust and credibility (Burton and Soboleva, 2011), such as Engage Mutual’s follower APS Group who have 1,143 of their own followers (APS Group Twitter, 2015).
Interaction
Once connections are forged, interaction is required to communicate with the audience. Interaction via social media offers significant advantages over more traditional methods of customer communication, which are limited by multiple factors such as customer availability and location (Sashi, 2012). The reach of messages sent out via Twitter are not limited to the number of ‘followers’ that an account has, as ‘retweets’ and ‘favourites’ can extend to new follower circles and beyond. With 288 million active users per month, Twitter is a platform with the potential to allow for interaction on mass (Twitter, 2015a).
Interaction on Twitter can allow for organisations and their audience to be constantly connected and this encourages two-way communication between parties. This is particularly important for Engage Mutual who operate in the financial services industry, as two-way communication is essential for encouraging repeat custom in this industry (Dunn and Hoegg, 2014).
Engage Mutual interact with Twitter users in a number of ways including sharing timely informative articles, such as in Figure Two, interacting with associated organisations, such as in Figure Three, and interacting with consumers, such as in Figure Four.
Figure Two: Engage Mutual share timely news articles (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015a)
Figure Three: Engage Mutual interact with associated organisations (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015b)
Figure Four: Engage Mutual interact with consumers (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015c)
Satisfaction
Despite this evidence of interaction, the successful progression to customer engagement requires that consumers are satisfied with the interaction (Sashi, 2012). Without satisfaction a connection may end and therefore evidence that customers connected to Engage Mutual on twitter are feeling satisfied can be found in connections that still exist after an interaction is completed.
In the instance of the interaction shown in Figure Four above, the customer that interacted with Engage Mutual did not maintain a relationship with the company by electing to ‘follow’ their profile. In contrast, the customer interacting with Engage Mutual in Figure Five below has elected to ‘follow’ Engage Mutual and therefore the connection is maintained as future messages published by Engage Mutual’s Twitter account will reach this customer.
Figure Five: Engage Mutual satisfy a customer through interaction (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015d)
While Engage Mutual are successfully satisfying some users, it is clear that they are not providing satisfaction for all users who interact with the channel. Li, Berens and de Maertelaere (2013) claim that channels with clear and specific purposes have greater ability to satisfy users. The Engage Mutual Twitter channel is generic (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015e) and therefore the goal of interactions may be unclear. In the example of the unsatisfactory interaction in Figure Four, the organisation have responded to the user with gratitude, however had this interaction taken place on a channel specific for customer support Engage Mutual may have responded with reassurance of after product support, which may have resulted in satisfaction and a continued connection with that user.
Retention
Of those users that Engage Mutual can satisfy through interactions they are able to retain connections, as in the example in Figure Five. Retention can be developed over time as satisfaction may be cumulative (Sashi, 2012). Retention can also be achieved through creating strong positive emotions towards a brand, however with low levels of brand saliency in financial services it can be particularly difficult for organisations such as Engage Mutual to achieve this (Dunn and Hoegg, 2014; Baumann, Elliot and Hamin, 2011).
Commitment
The next stage of the cycle, commitment, can be achieved through affective customer loyalty, where consumers form an emotional attachment with the brand (Sashi, 2012). Alternatively, this can be achieved through cognitive loyalty, where rational consumers remain loyal due to lacking a better option (Fraering and Minor, 2013). While effective in the short run, commitment in the long run will require Engage Mutual to incite strong positive emotions in users, by going above and beyond customer expectations (Fraering and Minor, 2013).
Advocacy
While it is difficult to measure the commitment of Twitter users to Engage Mutual, it is possible to see demonstrations of brand advocacy for Engage Mutual’s social project, as in Figure Six below.
Figure Six: Engage Mutual social project advocates (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015f)
Brand advocacy on Twitter is particularly visible as it becomes very straight forward for advocates to share their views and feel connected with a brand (Sashi, 2012). A large number of consumer interactions on Engage Mutual’s Twitter page are sending messages like these, allowing the Engage Mutual brand to be spread into new circles of users, thus improving brand awareness (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). The popularity of sharing the social project content likely stems from it being likeable, easy to share, relevant to many people and accessible through multiple channels, both offline and online (Mills, 2012; Engage Mutual, 2015).
Engagement
The last stage of achieving customer engagement is turning advocates into fans who will remain unconditionally loyal to a brand (Sashi, 2012). To achieve this, Engage Mutual needs users to feel extremely high levels of satisfaction in interactions, a rational reason to commit to a brand and affective loyalty (Fraering and Minor, 2013; Sashi, 2012). Engaged customers add value to an organisation’s brand and act as advocates when interacting with other users thus creating a community within a brand (Sashi, 2012). There is no evidence of Engage Mutual customers engaging in this way and the topic ‘#engagemutual’ does not contain user to user discussion (Twitter, 2015b).
From this evaluation of Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel it is clear that Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement model can be useful in evaluating the success of a channel. It becomes apparent that a channel can have users at many stages at any one time and that one type of interaction and response does not suit all users. Engage Mutual’s Twitter account does add value to the brand, increasing reach of the brand name and allowing advocates of the brand to easily share their views with others. While there are clearly some issues to address in order to make progression through the cycle more successful, it appears that medium size financial services companies can benefit from using a Twitter channel to engage customers afterall.
For more information on the customer engagement cycle visit http://bit.ly/1ziG4NO to read Sashi’s (2012) full article.
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