Marketing firm to design customer engagement strategies for organisations

Corporate Identities, a joint venture between market knowlege company Misco and C-ID International, the corporate marketing communications firm, has fused the expertise within the partnership to launch a customer engagement strategy offering and support organisations identify ways to give clients added value.

A business’s image depends on the relations between the customers themselves

C-ID International has interests in Corporate Connections, a joint venture with Demajo Group which represents Mediaset and AC Milan in Malta.

Ideal for start-ups and valuable to established firms operating in business-to-business or business-to-customer sectors, a customer engagement strategy partner helps align corporate culture, values and behaviours so that customers share and experience the philosophy.

“The ‘marriage’ provides a unique offer to the Maltese market because of the broad expertise both companies hold,” Misco director Lawrence Zammit told The Times Business. “We have continued to look at trends in the market and it is becoming evident that the key element in marketing today is customer engagement in its various forms. Where previously it was important to be customer-centric, today the concept is to be value-centric. To achieve value centricity, you have to engage customers.”

Keeping new and existing customers close to a business has a real, measurable value. Marketing research has found that winning a new customer can cost up to five times more than retaining one. A two per cent increase in customer retention can have the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 per cent.

Mr Zammit explained a team of experts with considerable experience in business strategy, human resources and marketing consulting, research, training and development and recruitment, would design a tailor-made strategy. The delivered product would take the form of a philosophy that would need to be applied efficiently and effectively so that it pervades within the organisation.

“Any organisation has customers,” Mr Zammit added. “The customer engagement philosophy becomes part of the business strategy and is reflected in the decisions taken at senior management level and permeates down the line to customer contact level.”

Marketer Jes Saliba who leads the Corporate Identities team, said a customer engagement strategy sees value added to every contact point clients have with a business. Real engagement is created by enhancing human resources, information tools beyond Facebook pages and customer relationship management methodology, and all traditional communication channels. The qualitative aspect of the company’s product offering is enhanced through synergies between company values, staff and communications, and customers. The approach is horizontal, rather than top-down or bottom-up.

In markets like Malta’s, where there is ‘hyper competition’, products of growing similarity, and increasingly knowledgable customers, customer loyalty is constantly threatened.

Mr Zammit stressed customer engagement helped foster long-lasting relations that were not only based on price, product or emotions.

“Over the years, we have had various initiatives that have served their purpose – concepts like quality management, customer service, mystery shopping and ISO 9000, training in customer service,” Mr Zammit continued. “We are not suggesting they are set aside, rather we believe in putting them together to make them meaningful for the customer. It is about how the customer feels valued.

“Customer engagement is beyond the one-to-one marketing approach – it implies a three-way approach. Today, it is not a question of a relationship between a company and a customer, but of one between the customers themselves. Customers communicate between themselves with ease and speed like never before. The ultimate image of the business does not depend on the individual relationship, but on the relations between the customers themselves.”

Mr Zammit cites Trip Advisor, the travellers’ reviews portal, as one of the best examples of the trend which has influence on existing and future customer behaviour.

These strategies go beyond factoring in emotional intelligence in customer relations. Customers now expect businesses to be agile enough to learn about their wants and needs, and anticipate the future to delight them.

Mr Zammit stressed engagement can take place only if organisations have a learning ability to pre-empt customer wants. It ties in with the latest marketing trends – dubbed Marketing 3.0 – that go beyond the web or technology fads, advertising or campaigns.

“What we are offering in terms of customer engagement strategies is direct experience in a host of disciplines. Every member of our team has a number of business success stories under their belt. We will apply our collective experience to other environments and organisations,” Mr Zammit said.

“A handful of organisations have already understood the value of having a customer engagement strategy partner and we are dealing with our very first enquiries.”