Social media and mobile customer engagement coming of age

The fifth annual Customer Engagement Report produced by Econsultancy in association with cScape shows more than half of companies are looking to invest in social media as a customer service channel while three in four are investing in the mobile channel

The research is useful for those who want to get an overview of customer engagement strategies and tactics, and the extent to which companies are adapting to changing customer behaviour and attitudes, and increased use of social media and the mobile channel.

The 74-page report is based on a survey of more than 1,000 respondents, carried out in September and October 2010.  Respondents include client-side digital marketers and digital agencies. The report findings are divided into the following sections:

• Customer engagement strategy
• Tactics, behaviour and attitudes
• The social enterprise (i.e. extent to which companies are adopting social media)
• Mobile

Report highlights include:

• Almost three-quarters of responding companies (74%) believe that their customer engagement strategy is either "very successful" or "quite successful". This combined figure is an increase from 71% last year.
• Email newsletters, presence on social networks and micro-blogging are the tactics most likely to result in a tangible improvement to companies' online customer engagement.
• Significantly more companies than last year are planning to increase investment in user-generated content, on-site branded communities/forums and rich on-page interactive experiences.
• More than half of companies (54%) are planning to invest in social media as a customer service channel.
• The vast majority of company respondents (73%) are planning to invest in the mobile channel in 2011. This compares to 60% who said they planned mobile investment at the same stage a year ago.

This is widely recognised as the most comprehensive and influential report available on customer engagement, and features expert commentary from the likes of Jim Sterne, Adam Hibbert, Ron Shevlin, Richard Sedley, Steve Woods and Ian Jindal.