The watchperson takes note of every person entering their guarded domain, devoting their attention to anything that demands a response. No customer is remembered by the Watchperson.

The Watchperson is an accurate enough representation of how quite a few organizations have approached audience engagement. They have learned to excel in quantifying their audience traffic and performance, tracking, for instance, monthlya active users. What gets erased from view—due to an unfortunate mixture of poor strategy and ineffective technology—is the entire context of the individual customer, whose actions across the brand’s touchpoints and over time are part of an evolving whole, as opposed to triggers for one-off responses.

And it should come as no surprise that customers want something else. Instead of a silent, minimally responsive Watchperson, they want an experience that is personal, evolving with them in real time and across channels—one that a Relationship Manager, a better model for how brands can approach audience engagement, are much more poised to facilitate.

A New Approach

Ditching the Watchperson approach for one modeled after a Relationship Manager requires several ingredients for success. There’s a company-wide embrace of the new framework for customer engagement. The team will need to be properly re-skilled (and up-skilled) to manage the new processes. Budgetary considerations will enter the picture. And last, but most certainly not least, the right technologies need to be identified, built, and/or introduced.

To effectively improve audience engagement like a Relationship Manager, three factors need to be taken into consideration: functions, engagement, and action triggers.

1. Function

Each customer is important. Instead of only focusing on the volume of your visitor traffic, devote resources towards understanding all the other aspects of the audience, ideally at the individual level. In establishing who they are, how they behave, and where they convert, you can tailor your audience’s journeys to conversion and loyalty.

2. Engagement

Each customer is at a different stage of the lifecycle journey. This means that while some are more active in the consideration phase, others may be limited to sporadic interactions with your brand after the initial purchase. Tailoring the customer experience to the contextual needs of the customer will avoid overwhelming newly acquired clients and turning away potential converts due to irrelevant communications.

3. Action Triggers

Zoom out from the immediate context of a customer’s behavior occurring at the moment. Consider their past actions, transactions, and preferences derived by your solutions. Use those insights to plan out the next steps and offer a far more personalized experience. This will give you far better chances at creating a more lasting relationship, one that delivers more value for you and the customer alike.

Maximum value is inseparable from an audience engagement approach that prioritizes the cultivation of a personal relationship with the customer. It’s not a hard lesson, but translating to practice can feel difficult, especially in the absence of reliable solutions to expedite your transformation. For more insights, hear this talk from our CTO, Mani Gopalaratnam, on how brands can ensure every customer relationship is a two-way street that generates value for all.