Earlier this month, my esteemed colleague Lance Loveday wrote a compelling piece for Search Engine Land’s Just Behave column, colloquially titled “A Plea to Stop Dissing Your Customers”.

In fact, I’d highly recommend clicking over to that post before continuing with this one.

Seriously, I’ll wait.

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Welcome back.

As you no doubt noticed in that article, Lance highlights key points from the 3rd Annual Online Customer Engagement Survey – research that addresses how organizations are (or aren’t) preparing for long-term success in the online marketplace.

What struck me most about Lance’s post is his point that while customer engagement (obviously the focus of the 2009 Survey) is not a new term or a new concept, it is enjoying what he identifies as a “renaissance of sorts” in the online marketing world.

Upon reading the Survey itself, you’ll see this renaissance translates into approximately 52% of Company respondents (and 43% of Agencies) indicating that customer engagement is considered “essential” to their organizations – figures that are up from last year’s results.

Which is where I need to stop and raise a point.

Maybe it’s my Pollyanna-ish view of the world, but I’d like to think that, at this point in Online Marketing’s evolution (revolution?), most organizations would understand and embrace the idea that long-term success can only be achieved by developing mutually beneficial relationships between businesses and customers.

But then, I’m not called an idealist for nothing.

However, I am also an opportunist – as are many organizations.

Which means that in this time of economic uncertainty, recession-based decisions and “bottom-line” rhetoric, smart organizations will turn to strategies designed to increase efficiencies, minimize losses and maximize long-term gains.

And when they make this turn, what does it look like and on what do they focus?

Enter the 2009 Online Customer Engagement Survey.

About the Survey

Sponsored by cScape and conducted by E-consultancy, the 2009 Online Customer Engagement Survey, now in its third year, is the largest survey of its kind anywhere in the world, with nearly 1300 companies and supplier agencies participating.

Full Disclosure: Closed Loop Marketing assisted in promoting this survey in the US.

The goal of the Survey is to:

Gauge awareness of customer engagement, to investigate the extent to which organisations prioritise it, and to look into the barriers and opportunities for creating optimal customer experiences.

The 2009 Online Customer Engagement Report, based on the Survey’s findings, includes responses to questions about these key aspects of customer engagement:

• Importance of customer engagement
• Interest in customer engagement
• Behaviour of an engaged customer
• Mapping customer experiences
• Customer engagement and the troubled economy
• Changing customer behaviour and attitudes
• Ways of improving engagement and areas of investment
• Mobile marketing to enhance customer engagement
• Issues around customer engagement and key principles
• Barriers to better online customer engagement
• Key principles of customer engagement
• Migration of marketing budgets

Of significant value are brief articles that expand on the results of the Survey and provide additional synthesis, by such marketing professionals and researchers as:

• Andy Beal – “Customer engagement takes center stage in economic downturn”
• Jim Sterne – “Online marketing working. Senior managers sleeping.”
• Becky Carroll – “Creating customer engagement on their turf”

At the end of the Report, the cScape Customer Engagement Unit team, directed by Richard Sedley, provides relevant perspectives on customer engagement through thought-provoking articles that serve to unify the research and position the results in the context of a broader online world.

Some examples:

• Lucy Conlan –Tread carefully – the customer is not always right
  When it comes to email, customer centricity doesn’t mean being customer led
• Hugh Gage – Meeting expectations is the first step to engaging with your customers
  Using analytics to better understand customer behaviour
• David Dodd – Can rich content mean rich customer experience?
  How to make cool stuff really work for you
• Richard Sedley – Can I tell you a story?
  How to use narrative in online engagement

What does it all mean?

In the Introduction to this year’s Online Customer Engagement Report, Richard Sedley suggests that because the current international economic challenges are predicted to reach well into the next decade, those organizations who are:

… able to grasp the changes in … customers’ behaviour and psychology while placing an emphasis on delivering increased value, [are the ones who] will be able to reap the rewards of customer engagement.

Furthermore, and to many of the points made in Lance Loveday’s post referenced earlier, because the internet is rapidly taking over traditional media, organizations are increasingly finding that a “push” strategy of manufactured consumer demand will no longer be as effective – and that they will be held accountable to a more sincere, customized level of interaction – if by nothing else than by the bottom line.

Richard goes on to say that those organizations that “get” such an approach, with its emphasis on engagement and quality are the ones who are “best placed to emerge winners from the current economic situation… [and] those that can’t have a lot to lose.”

Idealists of the world, start your engines.

View related topics: client-expectations, customer engagement