Today, most brands face the inevitable challenge to predict what their customers desire. Proactive communication has become the bespoke standard to overcome the various challenges which are presently involved in curating the customer experience across various digital journeys. Yet, customer engagement covers the purview of far greater challenges than merely determining what the customer wants and how they will search for the solution. 

User engagement has become the cornerstone of creating a happy customer base which can often be a complicated feat to achieve, even for some of the most sophisticated brands.
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Most Common Customer Engagement Challenges Faced By Digital Businesses

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Poor Personalization

Poor customization has rapidly become one of the most negative components of a user's overall brand experience. The majority of shoppers nowadays are annoyed by impersonal shopping experiences and will only interact with marketing messages that are specifically relevant to their needs and want.

How the best do it: It’s no surprise that this tech giant and mega-retailer also leads the way in personalization. The company personalizes customers’ homepages, email offers, and recommendations; much of this is done in real-time, powered by algorithms that consider customers’ behavior, search history, buying patterns, and other data. 
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The Result: More than 40% of buyers make a purchase based on Amazon’s recommendations. 

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Disconnected Customer Journeys

When it comes to shopping, today's consumers want to be in complete control of their experience. For this reason, brands must be prepared to interact with consumers on every channel—from mobile to social to in-store—in order to drive customer engagement to the desired level. Consistency across platforms is also vital for increasing engagement, so marketers must ensure that all major communication touchpoints are consistent.

How the best do it: The online food giant Zomato has one of the most connected user ecosystem amongst digital brands. The company uses AI powered tool and a team of gifted copywriters to execute omnichannel communications. 
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The Result: The quirky and unique push notifications by the team are a key reason for the tremendous growth of Zomato’s sales. 

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Poor UX design

Complexity is another issue that hampers companies’ ability to create seamless interactions. A complex UX might discourage customers from spending more time and exploring more features on the app. Stuffing too many features inside your digital experience might also be a bad idea, as users will quickly get overwhelmed and try and find simpler alternatives. 

How the best do it: Netflix is without a doubt the gold standard for UX design. The app creates a fully immersive experience for the user to spend maximum time and explore the most features on the platform. 
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The Result: The watch next feature allows Netflix to continue engaging their users with new and exciting content. 

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Reducing Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is an essential ingredient for user retention and the success of any business. To be able to do this, businesses ought to be able to meet the high demands of the business by building a good customer base.

The use of interactive and immersive UX design can enhance the final user engagement through gamification.

How the best do it: The Starbucks Rewards Program generates customer loyalty, increased revenue, and data for the company to create meaningful 1:1 relationships and personalized marketing efforts.
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The Result: People have a higher incentive to choose Starbucks as they can collect points over time and get access to cool rewards or exclusive perks. 

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Introduction To Gamification

When it comes to improving customer engagement on digital platforms, gamification plays a significant role in helping enhance the learning experience. Conventionally, gamification is inclusive of a learning methodology wherein multiple game-like elements are employed to enhance the learning experience. In the case of customer engagement, these game-like elements, such as peer competition and score tables can be used to drive increased engagement.

With gamification techniques, users get to move up different “levels” within the activity based on their effort and actions, whether buying something, posting a review, providing feedback or sharing on social media. Completing these actions and receiving the award gives them a feeling of accomplishment or completion.

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Gamification Strategies For Customer Engagement

We have illustrated the major gamified strategies that will help you boost customer engagement with fully immersive experiences: 

• The Customer Is In Control Now: A gamified UX design can improve user engagement by making the user feel in control. Creating a gamification campaign wth strong game design, it encourages exploration and users get to decide how to proceed. If they're choosing how to play and interact, they're more likely to enjoy the experience overall.
   
• Users Can See Progress: Part of the nature of game mechanics is that a player has an idea of where they are in the game, from what level they are on to how far they have left to go. People like to feel like they're making progress, and you can apply this aspect of gaming to your digital experience to ensure that your users stay motivated.
  
  
• People Are Inherently Competitive: Gamification takes into account the fact that people are competitive by nature. They are competitive with themselves and with others, and since they like to compete, games satisfy this itch. Adding a competitive aspect to your game means that once a user starts it, they will likely become committed out of a desire to win, or at least outrank their friends or family playing the game. This spirit of competition will ensure that the user spends more time on your app (or web platform) and explores more features.

So, if you're ready to increase your user engagement, gamification is the way forward! Elevate your user experience today with such interactive game-like experiences with CustomerGlu. 

CustomerGlu is our low-code customer experience platform that enables marketers and PMs to build such immersive experiences without spending fortunes on fancy game developers.  

Request demo access now to know more about our low-code customer experience platform. 
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Q: Can gamification induce specific benefits for customer engagement?

A: Gamification can help earn feedback and rewards, and create an efficient way to create a marketing strategy that ultimately helps to integrate business planning with the strategy.

Q: How relevant is gamification in the context of customer engagement?

A: In a digital environment, gamification helps to drive real customer engagement through targeted marketing strategies, which can ultimately enhance the business cycle.

Q: What is a good customer engagement strategy?

A: An ideal customer engagement strategy should be able to capture the attention of existing customers with a quality experience while roping in new customers.