What is customer engagement? Strategies and best practices to know

You’re grabbing coffee at your favourite local cafe. The barista knows your name, remembers your usual order, and suggests a new drink based on your love for seasonal flavours.

That seemingly small yet highly personal touch makes you feel valued, keeps you coming back, and may even prompt you to share your positive experience on social media.

A coffee shop that uses customer ‘data’ like this to make you feel much more than just a mere transaction is a prime example of a well-executed customer engagement model.

This approach doesn’t just apply to consumer brands, though.

It also extends into the B2B world, where go-to-market (GTM) teams—notably, sales, marketing, and customer success—must work in tandem to deliver exceptional experiences across the buyer’s journey through a thoughtful customer engagement model that builds brand loyalty.

What is customer engagement?

Customer engagement is the ongoing relationship management with your customers through direct interactions that help establish and maintain trust, spark interest in new products or services, and make them feel valued in every touchpoint with your business.

Whereas customer satisfaction indicates how happy someone is after a specific interaction, customer engagement is about how connected they feel to your brand over time.

An engaged customer (or client) not only buys from you in one form or another (one-off purchases, recurring subscriptions, annual contracts, and the like) but also might:

• Read your newsletter and brand update emails regularly
• Engage with various types of content you produce
• Adopt new features and capabilities in your solution
• Refer new business opportunities to your company
• Leave a review and publicly endorse your business
• Attend your webinars, virtual events, and user groups
• Join your brand community to connect with peers
• Renew and/or expand the scope of their contracts
• Enter into a beta testing programme for a new offerings
• Take part in some type of customer loyalty programme
• Participate in a case study or business success story

These behaviours are signals of a well-tended relationship and, in many cases, the ability to share bespoke, personalised experiences with customers that have an outsized impact on your company’s near- and long-term success.

“Delivering rich, personalised digital engagements that address the unique challenges and needs of each deal will increase client clarity, drive confidence, and accelerate deal cycles,” Highspot’s “What Good Client Engagement Looks Like” guide explains.

“Plus, when clients are engaged, they feel a connection with the brand,” the guide continues. “They often become vocal brand advocates, spreading the word about the company and product.

Benefits of successful customer engagement

When customers feel connected to a brand, they’re more likely to stick around, spend more money, and share their experiences. Successful customer engagement strategies have a direct impact on your revenue growth, leading to additional purchases, referrals, and increased customer lifetime value.

Those are high-level benefits. Here’s how your GTM team’s customer engagement efforts can have a tangible, meaningful impact on your business at a more granular level.

Improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention

Recent Gallup research indicates that emotional factors influence 70% of buying decisions, and only 30% are rational. This explains why engaged customers, who are emotionally invested in your company and product, have a longer customer lifecycle.

This emotional connection stems from feeling recognised and valued, likely dating back to their initial interaction.

To build brand loyalty and following, SaaS companies, for instance, often build customer loyalty programmes that offer early access to beta features, exclusive training, or priority support.

These are benefits that reward usage and provide the customer with a personal reason to stay. They sense that they are part of something more than a contract.

When emotional engagement is strong—ideally through content personalisation— churn is low, and brand allegiance grows among existing and new customers.

Uncover new upsell and cross-sell opportunities

Staying engaged with customers as their business evolves helps you understand their changing needs.

When your sales and success teams stay connected post-sale, they can identify and recommend relevant products without pressure. For example, Dropbox identifies heavy file users and suggests premium storage plans because they already know what the user values.

With 52% of GTM leaders targeting upsell and cross-sell revenue opportunities and 35% of GTM teams aiming to execute new upsell and cross-sell initiatives, per Highspot’s “The Expansion Equation” guide, it’s clear finding new business-growth avenues is a big focus for B2B companies today.

When you factor in customer experiences with your brand to date using your wealth of customer data and insights—including which assets they engage with across their buying journey—your business can make informed decisions about how to best pitch customers on new offerings and, in turn, help them improve their own bottom lines.

Stronger customer acquisition through advocacy and referrals

Engaged, loyal customers are far more likely to become brand advocates.

These individuals leave reviews, share on social media platforms, spread positive word-of-mouth, and volunteer for or agree to take part in case studies. Their voices—the most compelling form of social proof there is—are more trusted than your ads, and they help drive new business organically.

“Featuring a customer in a press release or highlighting their success using your products and services in a blog post or whitepaper can be a powerful way to earn their loyalty,” Forbes Technology Council contributor Yoav Kutner recently wrote.

“Such initiatives also make your customers a true partner, helping them feel invested in your company’s success and reducing the chance of them considering your competitors’ offerings,” Kutner added.

What customer engagement looks like across teams

Customer engagement is a team effort across all customer-facing teams. Each group uniquely builds relationships that begin at the first touchpoint and should continue throughout the customer’s entire lifecycle.

Today, customer expectations are higher than ever, making engagement efforts even more challenging. They want brands to understand their industry, their role within it, the challenges they face, and what customer success looks like for their team.

Generic messaging just doesn’t work. McKinsey research found three-quarters of shoppers now expect consistent interactions across all departments, not siloed conversations or disjointed experiences.

To meet that expectation, businesses—specifically, their GTM teams—must connect their people, processes, and technologies to deliver a seamless customer experience at every step.

This is achievable through monthly sync meetings, where teams share new customer insights, recent support challenges, and what’s working in sales, marketing, and customer success content.

This front-line feedback helps everyone fine-tune messaging, spot trends early, review key metrics, and understand changing customer behaviour. In turn, they can improve customer engagement as an interconnected team.

Customer engagement for marketing

Marketing sets the stage for engagement by creating a first impression that grabs attention. It’s where customers start to feel your brand gets them (or doesn’t).

Marketers educate and connect with audiences through content, social media channels, emails, and events to spark lasting interest. The key is relevant content and messaging that addresses real needs.

Personalisation can take many forms: from addressing the person by name, to suggesting products or services based on past behaviour, to sending emails following specific digital and in-person interactions. (Think those who attend webinars, virtual events, or real-world meetings and conferences).

This attention to detail demonstrates that you understand their world and helps them engage more quickly with content that feels relevant and tailored to their needs.

Additionally, an integrated marketing strategy across channels, such as aligning your LinkedIn tone with your website, creates a unified brand identity. To measure customer engagement success, consider key metrics such as:

• Click-through rates: The percentage of visitors who click on your links
• Website engagement: Measured by time spent or number of pages viewed, content downloads, and social interactions
• Marketing-qualified leads: Prospects who have expressed interest in your products or solutions

Focus on quality over quantity—10 engaged leads beat 100 uninterested ones, after all.

Customer engagement for sales

Sales engagement builds long-term trust. Sales reps often have the first human interaction with a customer, so those moments are critical for setting the tone right off the bat.

A personalised sales email that addresses a prospect’s specific challenge, such as a CRM solution for managing leads, demonstrates that you are paying attention and genuinely care.

To maintain the connection, sales teams use digital sales rooms (DSRs), which are secure, personalised online spaces where buyers can access and explore tailored content at their own pace.

Following up with helpful resources, such as a short product overview video, a case study from a similar-sized company, and a pricing calculator, instead of just a sales pitch or a generic email, keeps the conversation alive by blending self-guided content with a personal touch.

To measure the impact of your work, track engagement with:

• Email open and reply rates
• Call connect rates
• Meeting attendance
• Time to close
• Pipeline conversion

The best CRM tools help organise and manage these customer touchpoints, but it’s the human touch that ultimately drives positive client experiences and boosts customer engagement and satisfaction.

Customer engagement for customer service

Customer service is where engagement either solidifies or collapses.

A satisfied customer might stay loyal, but a dissatisfied customer can quickly become a churn risk. When frustration arises, your response defines their experience (and whether they ‘stick around’).

A well-trained, empathetic support team can turn a bad moment into a great one, like resolving a billing issue with a friendly call and a discount code. Fast, respectful responses show that you value their time, and proactive outreach, such as checking in after a big purchase, builds rapport.

Recognising returning customers by referencing past interactions creates familiarity. For example, a support rep might say, “I see you had trouble with syncing issues last month, so let’s make sure everything is running smoothly.”

To track and improve experiences, measure customer engagement metrics alongside:

• Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT): Assesses the rating of specific customer interactions
• Customer Effort Scores (CES): Evaluates the ease of obtaining help
• Net Promoter Scores (NPS): Indicates the likelihood of recommending
• Average response time: Denotes speed with which concerns are addressed

Tools like live chat or help desks help deliver both online and offline engagement, but the quality of the interaction, not just the speed, ultimately defines the customer’s perception of your brand.

How to measure customer engagement

Many teams struggle with prioritising customer engagement. Using a scorecard can help you implement effective customer engagement strategies that help retain accounts with high customer lifetime value (CLV) by auditing GTM efforts, spotting engagement gaps, and setting priorities.

Score each area (1-5) to understand how strong or fragmented your current engagement is. Include examples, like “customers are asking for more how-to videos” or “finance personas are not clicking through onboarding emails.” Bring this scorecard to team meetings for discussion and review.

Engagement Category	Description	Score (1-5)
Audience Targeting	Are we focusing on the right roles, personas, and industries?
Content Relevance	Is our content solving real problems for real people?
Timely Follow-Up	Do we follow up with useful, personalised messages?
Cross-Team Alignment	Are sales, marketing, and support coordinating messages and data?
Customer Feedback Loop	Are we collecting, sharing, and acting on feedback regularly?
Tool & Tech Use	Do we have the right tools to engage across channels (CRM, chat, content management)?
Customer Sentiment Awareness	Are we tracking customer satisfaction, effort, and loyalty? Are we learning from this data?

How enablement can enhance customer engagement

Customer engagement begins with empowering your teams to deliver exceptional service.

The approach only works when audience targeting, relevant content, and a customer-centric mindset come together through enablement. It provides sales, marketing, and support with the right tools, training, and content to build trust and deliver timely, relevant communications that resonate and address their wants, needs, and pain points.

Feedback loops, such as customer surveys, help refine customer engagement strategies (if you actually listen to and act on them). When teams have quick access to resources, they can respond more quickly and effectively, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.

Putting a human face on interactions, whether through a personalised sales pitch, a tailored campaign, or a friendly support call makes customers feel like partners, not just tickets in your system.

• Sales: Sales enablement platforms like Highspot train sales reps on customer pain points, messaging, objections, solutions, and tools that will support the sales process. For example, a rep can learn to use a content hub to share a case study of a customer in a similar industry during a call, immediately increasing customer engagement.
• Marketing: Enabled marketing teams use data analytics to inform marketing efforts and craft personalised marketing campaigns. They know what content drives engagement, which messages resonate at each stage of the customer journey, and how to support sales with relevant assets (updates to existing collateral and net-new pieces of content to inform and advance buyers).
• Customer Service: Enablement equips customer success and support teams with knowledge bases, allowing them to provide quick resolutions to client questions and concerns and act as trusted, reliable allies. A centralised FAQ can help them solve issues in half the time, improving CSAT scores. When support agents know what to expect, they can anticipate customer needs and become the go-to helper.

A unified sales enablement solution isn’t a nice-to-have in your GTM team’s tech stack today.

It’s now table-stakes—and not just for executing a high-quality customer engagement strategy.

The best enablement platforms aren’t only comprehensive, easy-to-navigate systems where you can store, analyse, and update relevant marketing, sales, and support content. They’re also tools that offer advanced yet intuitive AI capabilities that simplify and streamline your GTM staff’s work.

“Organisations are seeking to secure their existing customers,” Highspot’s “Guide to AI in sales enablement and its impact in 2025” guide found.

“They’re aiming to fend off the competition,” the report noted. “And they’re deeply fixated on supplying the coaching that will ensure their go-to-market teams can effectively do so. It’s a monumental task—and it’s why organisations are increasingly turning to AI to keep pace and stay competitive.”