How to Build a Customer Engagement Hub in 8 Steps
A proven way to improve customer engagement is by creating a Customer Engagement Hub—a platform where customers can access information about products and services and participate in community discussions without being redirected to different departments.
There are many benefits to an engagement hub – it is your own dedicated webpage for product-related questions, best practices, discussions, events, etc. Plus, it integrates with core enterprise applications and enterprise systems such as Hubspot and Salesforce, commonly used for managing customer relationships and providing customer service solutions.
This integration allows companies to track customer interactions, gain insights into individual customer activity, achieve higher conversion rates and improve lead generation results.
Instead of investing months of your time, money and effort struggling to build an engagement hub from scratch, with Bettermode you can build a customer engagement platform in just a few simple steps.
In this blog post, we’ll explore all the ways you can use Bettermode to help deliver contextual customer experiences.
How to build an engagement hub in 8 steps
Thankfully, with no-code tools and basic tech skills, creating a customer engagement hub has never been easier. Bettermode’s pre-built templates and free content management system (CMS) let you skip the expensive developers and additional software and build a professional hub that will boost customer satisfaction in a matter of hours.
Sounds interesting?
Then let us guide you through every phase of the building process to help you create your very own customer engagement hub for free.
0. Log in to your free Bettermode account
Don't have an account?
No problem! It takes only a couple of minutes to set up your account!
Once prompted to the login page you can sign up with either your e-mail or Google account.
- Select a template
Bettermode understands how time-consuming it can be to create a hub from scratch, so we came up with a win-win solution: prebuilt customizable templates!
By scrolling through all the available templates such as —EduMark, BetterHub, Bytelink and many more—you can select the one that suits your website needs.
Not sure which one to pick for your customer engagement hub?
Well, it's a good thing we got you covered.
Allow us to introduce the SaaSplex template.
With Saasplex, you don’t need to worry and map out the parts a customer engagement hub should have —everything you need is already included in a single template.
With Saasplex customers are encouraged to share their opinions by checking out the Feedback forms, ask questions within the Ask community section and use the Help Center to access product-specific articles, guides and FAQs.
- Customize the spaces in your customer engagement hub
After selecting the template, here is what your hub will look like:
Every customer hub is different. To begin customizing your newly made website, first start by editing the spaces.
Wait, but what exactly are spaces?
Spaces are pages within your website that consist of areas filled with various types of content or interactions like forums or knowledge bases.
Luckily, SaaSplex comes with pre-built spaces that need minimal customization, thus saving you hours in advance.
Here are some great pre-built spaces provided by SaaSplex that are ideal for engagement hubs:
- Discussions: A place where customers can start discussions on various topics about the product, thus encouraging customers to interact with one another.
- Ask the community: Customers can ask questions and get answers from other users without needing to contact customer support.
- Blog: A place where you can publish articles related to your product and therefore improve your website’s search engine ranking.
- Product updates: By keeping users informed with regular product updates, customers will stay up-to-date on new features and improvements.
- Wishlist: A place within the community where customers can provide feature requests or improvements for your roadmap.
By integrating these spaces into customer engagement hubs, you can improve community engagement and offer self-service support by allowing customers to input their suggestions, find answers to common questions, check product updates, and resolve any potential issues they might have.
All of these spaces can be found listed on the left side panel of the template.
Now, that we know what spaces are, it's time we delete some that are unnecessary from the template.
To do this, simply click on the profile picture found on the upper right corner of the page and select the administration tab.
Once we enter the backend, we can manage the spaces of our template by clicking on the content tab found on the left sidebar of the administrator and selecting spaces.
Here, you can see an overview of all of the spaces or pages on the template. From here, we can remove or add spaces as we like.
To remove a space, click on the three dots found next to a space you want to remove and go to settings.
Once the settings tab pops up, go straight to the danger zone to delete a space.
After accessing the proper tab, input the name of the space and click the delete button.
And that's how you can remove a space.
- Design the layout
Once you are finished with organizing spaces enter the DesignStudio and select Collections and Spaces to customize the layout of new or existing pages.
Depending on your company brand you can remove or add hero banners, edit the sidebar, change the layout and even insert call-to-action buttons.
Once you're finished with the Design Studio, remember to save the changes by pressing the save button in the upper right corner of the page.
- Add more content with Bettermode’s CMS
You can easily add content with our built-in Content Management System (CMS).
With just one tool, you can create content and build your customer community hub simultaneously. Say goodbye to the need for third-party CMS software, as everything you need is available on a single platform.
A business should always strive to improve its customer communication. One of the best ways to satisfy current and future customers is by providing 24-7 customer support.
As a company, you can’t always know in advance what issues might arise during the customer journey, so it is important for enterprises to respond promptly once customers are faced with a challenge.
One way you can do this is by adding moderators to the customer engagement hub.
To do this, go to Administrator, select the People tab and click Staff.
As you can see here, we have a complete view of all of the staff members found on our customer engagement hub.
To add new staff members, click the Add Staff button located at the upper right corner of the page.
Now you can add in additional staff, choose the role of your employee and select what specific spaces new associates can moderate.
By adding moderators to your customer engagement hub, customers can expect quick responses to any questions or concerns they might have, whenever and wherever.
Additionally, moderators can monitor customer feedback and concerns within the community to identify recurring issues. By doing so, businesses can identify issues such as operational challenges and address them before they escalate into major problems.
Instead of waiting for customers to express dissatisfaction, companies can stay ahead by offering solutions to potential issues. Companies can take a proactive approach by allowing moderators to provide regular check-ins, timely notifications, surveys, polls and many more.
- Integrate additional tools
Another great feature of Bettermode is the ability to install different tools that help improve customer satisfaction.
However, each app's availability depends on your current plan. If you're interested in integrating your hub with multiple systems, check out our pricing plan here.
To install an app for your customer engagement hub, simply go to the App Store found in the Administrator, click on your desired app and press install.
Integrating apps into the hub lets you get new insights into customers' needs or interests.
For example, businesses can collect various customer data using the Cookie Consent Manager app.
Once set up, cookies can remember user preferences such as languages, favorite products and even offer personalized content based on customers' past interactions.
In addition, by enabling the Advertising and tracking cookies feature, your customer engagement hub can record customers' online activities across different websites. Using this data, businesses can show ads that are most relevant to their audience.
- Check reports and analytics
Having a reports and analytics tool for your customer engagement hub is quite important. These statistics provide insight into user behavior, customer engagement level and the overall performance of the hub.
Thankfully, you can find all essential statistics by checking out Reports through the Administrator.
On our platform, you can check analytics in the following tabs:
- Overview
- Reach and Engagement
- People
- Posts
- Spaces
- Audit logs
- Email logs
All reports found under these sections play a crucial role in the overall management and optimization of a customer engagement hub.
By checking the analytics, businesses can figure out what customers like or dislike, ultimately leading to new and improved customer engagement strategies.
With Reports and Analytics, businesses can gather large amounts of customer data. This will ultimately help industries create personalized experiences for each and every customer once they start interacting with a product.
- Activate your customer engagement hub
And there you go! Now that we have implemented all the important features of a customer engagement hub it's about time we start engaging with customers.
Best practices for building an engagement hub
If you're still unsure how to effectively create a customer engagement hub, here are some tips to help your business boost customer engagement and improve conversion rates.
- Display promotions and events
One great way to gain and retain customers is by showing promotions and events that will happen in the near future. Instead of forcing customers to first create an account on your website, try giving people the option to choose a deal straight from the landing page.
By doing so, businesses can reduce the risk of customers scrolling endlessly through pages without finding what they're searching for.
Hence, by displaying promotional or event banners with clear call-to-action (CTAs) buttons, a business can optimally engage customers to make purchases and sign up for upcoming events.
- Establish an omnichannel presence
Another benefit of using a customer engagement hub is the ability to work seamlessly across different channels. By implementing an omnichannel presence within your hub, you can provide a smooth customer journey.
Today, many enterprises rely heavily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automotation. Although virtual assistants and chatbots have their advantages, we have to maintain a human touch.
As a result, companies should aim to combine both communication channels into their customer engagement hub. This approach ensures that customers receive one important feature that technology can never have - empathy.
Here’s how you can achieve this:
- Chatbot: use chatbots to answer frequently asked questions and provide quick response
- Live chat: for more advanced questions, use the live chat for immediate support
- Video chat: use video chats for more personalized consultations
By integrating these channels into your hub, you allow customers to get the information they need quickly and efficiently, without the need to repeat themselves or switch between different communication channels.
- Create a content strategy
Like HubSpot, try mixing up your customer engagement strategy along with your marketing strategy. By doing so, you can create tons of different blog posts, videos, podcasts, how-to guides and so forth.
Now, not only will you create high-quality content for your hub, but boost customer engagement, marketing and product sales as well!
One way to do this is by creating product videos. Once made, turn them into different types of content and create the following sections on your engagement hub:
- A page within your hub dedicated to product videos
- A blog post section showcasing your product in greater detail
- Clips of videos to use on multiple channels like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram
With this approach, businesses can engage customers to reply with questions or provide feedback through multiple channels and start conversations within comment sections.
4. Make your hub mobile-friendly
Most customers today use their phones to read blogs, find answers, send inquiries, and check out products. For that reason, businesses should strive to create customer engagement hubs that are mobile-friendly.
Thankfully, with Bettermode, you don't have to worry about mobile optimization, as each section is already fully optimized.
Thus, whether clients are accessing the hub through their laptops, mobiles, or tablets, you can be confident that Bettermode will provide a user-friendly experience through all devices.
Conclusion
As customer expectations keep changing over time, businesses should strive to consistently provide a great customer experience.
By building a customer engagement hub, you can gain insights into customer wants and needs, behavior statistics, and allow users to share their personal data within your community.
Stop wasting time trying to learn code when you can use Bettrmode! With our templates and built-in CMS, you can set up your customer engagement hub in a single day anytime, anywhere.
Sparked your interest?
FAQs
What is customer engagement hub?
A customer engagement hub is an architectural framework that ties multiple systems together to effectively engage with customers. It helps collect customer data and gain insight into their needs. With software like Bettermode, you can set up a professional and user-friendly engagement hub in just a few hours without any prior coding experience.
What are the 4 P's of customer engagement?
Prioritizing a great customer experience will always place your company ahead of the competition. By engaging customers in the way they want to be engaged, the more loyal they will be. For, that reason it is important to always keep in mind the four principles of customer engagement: personalization, person, proactivity and problem-solving.
