The difference between online and offline customer engagement

There is much discussion about which of the two is more profitable for companies: online or offline customer engagement.

My personal two cents on this discussion is that both types of customer engagement are merely different sides of the same coin.

Handwriting Text Customer Engagement Loading. Concept meaning Forecasting the future event was originally uploaded by Jernej Furmanto Flickr and is reused here under the terms and conditions of the CC BY 2.0 DEED Attribution 2.0 GenericCreative Commons license

However, it could be argued that, since the ability to build an online relationship with customers is a fairly new phenomenon in the business world, compared to establishing strong customer connection through offline media, such as newspaper and magazine ads, new rules and principles should apply in this newly-formed arena of winning customers.

The common factor between online and offline customer engagement is the element of social interaction.

Whether a customer prefers to do their shopping through a retailer's website or is a regular offline shopper at a local grocery store, the element of socialization, as it is expressed through customer engagement, is still there.

In fact, going social has been the key to success for businesses for centuries now, and it is measured in the number of hours spent by the customer in searching, comparing, discussing and checking the quality of products or services with other shoppers and with businesses.

This process can take place either online or offline, and despite the high-technology and greater convenience link associated with online engagement of customers, offline customers spend an equally amount of time in looking for, and talking about, the quality of products or services that they buy.

Therefore, although they seem to be two totally different things, online and offline customer engagement follow the same rules basically.