On an annual basis, we conduct an independent study into Customer Engagement across various companies and industries. This study reveals which brands are succeeding at engaging their customers and identifies winning strategies for creating an engaging, emotional customer connection.

This year, the news isn’t great. Keeping company with plummeting consumer confidence and spending, customer engagement (the emotional connection a customer feels to a brand and the experience that translates to loyal behaviors) is also on a downward path.

Specifically, the Most Engaged Customers study uncovered a 15% decline in overall customer

engagement compared to a year ago.

This decline was noted across all sectors (Luxury, Retail and Casual Dining) and a majority of brands with just two companies showing a significant uptick in engagement: Wal-Mart and Radio Shack. It appears that in today’s economy, customers are focused on maximizing the value they receive for their depleting dollar. As such, the emotional connection consumers feel to discount brands that can help them do this appears to be on the rise.

That said, there are some clear winners in the study with extraordinarily high levels of Engagement.

These top ranked companies follow three strategies to help them succeed.

First, while the winning companies have fewer service failures the true differentiator is their ability to resolve problems successfully. Customers who feel that their