Let’s be honest, getting and keeping a customer’s attention feels harder than ever. The old playbook of generic marketing blasts just doesn’t work anymore. To keep people coming back, you need to build actual relationships, and that means engaging with them in ways that feel genuine.
That’s what this post is about. I’ve dug into what some of the best brands are doing right now and pulled out 7 solid customer engagement examples. We’ll look at what they do, why it works, and how you can steal some of their ideas, especially how AI can give you a bit of a leg up without being creepy.
What is customer engagement, really?
So, what are we even talking about here? Customer engagement isn’t just a one-off purchase or a good review. It’s the whole relationship a customer has with your brand, built from all the little interactions they have with you over time.
The game has definitely changed. It’s less about transactions and more about conversations. It’s about building a community and being helpful, sometimes even before a customer asks for it. This is where AI is starting to make a real difference, letting businesses offer instant, personal support in a way that just wasn’t possible a few years ago.
Our criteria for picking these customer engagement examples
To make sure this list was actually useful, I didn’t just grab the biggest names out there. I picked these examples based on a few things any business can learn from.
First, I looked for brands that make customers feel like individuals, not just another entry in a spreadsheet. The experience also had to feel connected, whether someone was on their website, using the app, or in a physical store. I was also looking for clever uses of tech, not just tech for tech’s sake. And most importantly, I focused on strategies that showed real results, like better retention or more sales.
Quick comparison of top customer engagement examples
| Example/Brand | Key Strategy | Primary Channel(s) | Key Technology | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Modern E-commerce Store | AI-Powered Proactive Support | Help Desk, Email, Chat | AI Agent (integrated) | Businesses wanting to scale support efficiently. |
| Spotify | Hyper-Personalization | Mobile App, Email | Machine Learning | Subscription services with high user data volume. |
| Sephora | Community & Loyalty | Website, Mobile App | Community Platform, CRM | Retailers building a loyal, enthusiast customer base. |
| Duolingo | Gamification | Mobile App | Gamification Engine | Apps focused on habit formation and daily usage. |
| Warby Parker | Omnichannel Experience | Website, Mobile App, Physical Stores | Augmented Reality (AR) | D2C brands blending online and offline experiences. |
| Grammarly | Value-Driven Nurturing | Email, In-Product | Marketing Automation | SaaS products aiming to increase feature adoption. |
| Wendy’s | Brand Personality & Social Interaction | Social Media (Twitter) | Social Listening Tools | Brands targeting a younger demographic with humor. |
7 powerful customer engagement examples for 2025
Here are seven brands that are setting the bar for customer engagement. Let’s get into what they’re doing and why it connects so well with people.
1. The modern e-commerce store and AI-powered proactive support
Think about an online store that feels like it has a helpful person ready to answer your question the second you think of it. That’s what good AI support can do. The smartest e-commerce brands are now building AI agents into their help desks and chat widgets. These bots are trained on all the company’s internal info, past support tickets, help docs, and even product details from platforms like Shopify.
The result is instant, 24/7 answers to the most common questions, like "Where is my order?" and "What’s your return policy?"
Why it works: This approach just makes sense. Customers get immediate answers to simple questions, so they’re happier. Meanwhile, the human support team can stop answering the same questions for the tenth time and focus on the trickier problems where they’re really needed. The AI can also sort and tag new tickets, routing them to the right person. It’s about being faster without losing the human touch.
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Pros: It’s super efficient, customers are happier with instant answers, and it can handle growth without you needing to hire a massive team.
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Cons: This only works if your internal knowledge base is in decent shape. The AI needs good information to learn from.
2. Spotify and hyper-personalization through data
Spotify is incredibly good at making you feel like it just gets your taste in music. Their yearly "Wrapped" summary is something everyone talks about, but the real work happens behind the scenes all year with playlists like "Discover Weekly." The platform looks at what you listen to, what you skip, and who your favorite artists are to build playlists that feel like a friend made them for you.
Why it works: Spotify takes all that listening data and turns it into a personal experience. It creates a feeling that the service is tailored specifically to you, which turns it from a simple music app into something you feel a real connection with. That’s a level of loyalty that’s tough to compete with.
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Pros: Builds serious brand loyalty and gets tons of free promotion when people share their "Wrapped" results online.
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Cons: This level of personalization requires a lot of user data, which can be a turn-off for people who are big on privacy.
3. Sephora and building a community with the Beauty Insider Program
Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is way more than a simple loyalty card. It has different tiers (Insider, VIB, and Rouge) that give customers a sense of status, but the real magic is in its online community. It’s a place where people can share photos of their makeup, ask for product recommendations, and write detailed reviews.
Why it works: The program creates a community where customers feel like they belong. This community becomes a huge source of user-generated content and honest reviews, which new shoppers trust way more than a slick ad. The tiered rewards make people feel like they’re part of an exclusive club, encouraging them to stick with the brand to unlock more perks.
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Pros: Encourages repeat business, turns regular customers into passionate fans, and provides a constant flow of authentic content.
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Cons: It takes real, ongoing effort to manage a community and keep it positive and active. You can’t just set it and forget it.
4. Duolingo and gamification that builds habits
Duolingo figured out how to make learning a language, which can be a real grind, feel like a fun game. They use a mix of clever tactics: daily streaks to keep you coming back, leaderboards for a little friendly competition, points for finishing lessons, and badges for hitting milestones.
Why it works: It taps into basic human psychology. We like seeing progress, earning rewards, and seeing how we stack up against others. These game-like features make you want to open the app every day, turning a learning tool into a daily habit.
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Pros: Incredibly effective for getting people to use the app daily and stick with it for the long haul.
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Cons: It’s a delicate balance. If you focus too much on the game aspect, you can sometimes lose sight of the actual learning.
5. Warby Parker and a seamless omnichannel experience
Warby Parker found a clever way to connect its online and physical stores. They knew the biggest headache with buying glasses online is that you can’t try them on. So they came up with two solutions. Their app uses augmented reality (AR) to let you "try on" frames virtually, and it works surprisingly well. Then there’s their "Home Try-On" program, where they mail you five frames to test out at home for free.
Why it works: It solves the single biggest point of friction for their customers. By using technology to fix a real problem, Warby Parker makes it easy to shop however you feel most comfortable, whether that’s from your couch or in one of their stores.
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Pros: It almost completely removes the hesitation to buy, creates a standout customer experience, and blends their digital and physical stores perfectly.
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Cons: The logistics behind this must be a nightmare. Managing all the shipping, returns, and AR tech is complex and expensive.
6. Grammarly and nurturing users with value-driven content
Grammarly uses its weekly emails to stay connected with users in a way that’s actually helpful. Instead of just trying to sell you something, they send you a personalized report on your writing. I actually get these emails, and they’re surprisingly useful. They show you your most common mistakes, how productive you were, and even how your vocabulary compares to other users.
Why it works: Every email quietly reminds you why the product is useful. It’s like a mini-report card that shows you how you’re improving, which keeps the brand on your mind and encourages you to use it more.
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Pros: It builds trust, positions the brand as an expert, and gets amazing email open rates without ever feeling salesy.
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Cons: Creating these kinds of detailed, personalized reports for every single user requires some serious data-crunching power.
7. Wendy’s and engaging with a distinct brand personality
On Twitter, Wendy’s basically threw the corporate rulebook out the window. Their tone is witty, funny, and sometimes just plain savage. They joke around with customers, roast their competitors, and comment on trends in a way that feels surprisingly self-aware for a huge brand.
Why it works: It makes the brand feel like a person, not a corporation. This approach is memorable and relatable, turning their social media account into something people follow for entertainment. It earns them a ton of free attention and makes customers feel like they’re interacting with a friend.
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Pros: Has huge potential to go viral, builds a unique brand identity, and doesn’t cost a lot to pull off.
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Cons: This is a high-risk strategy. One bad joke can cause a major headache, and this tone just wouldn’t work for every type of business.
How to build a winning strategy from these customer engagement examples with AI
Okay, those examples are great, but how do you actually do any of this yourself? Getting started with AI isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Here’s a simple way to think about it.
Start with your existing knowledge
The best place to start is with the information you already have. Your past support tickets and help docs are a treasure trove of your customers’ most common questions and problems. That’s exactly what an AI needs to learn the ropes of your business.
Automate the simple stuff, save your team for the hard stuff
Go through your support tickets and find the top 5-10 questions your team has to answer all day, every day. Think "Where’s my order?" or "How do I reset my password?" Those are perfect for an AI to handle. The goal isn’t to replace your team, but to let them off the hook from the repetitive work so they can focus on issues that need a human brain.
Test and simulate before you launch
Letting an AI talk to your customers can sound a little scary. The good news is you don’t have to just cross your fingers and hope for the best. Good tools let you test the AI on your past support tickets first, so you can see exactly how it would have answered. You get a clear picture of how well it will work before it ever goes live. For instance, a tool like eesel AI connects right into help desks like Zendesk or Freshdesk. You can set it up quickly, train it on your data, and run those simulations to see the results for yourself, risk-free.
Choose platforms with transparent pricing
A quick heads-up on pricing: watch out for tools that charge you for every ticket the AI solves. Your bill can get unpredictable fast, especially if you have a busy month. It’s usually better to find a platform with a straightforward flat rate. That way, you know exactly what you’re paying. As an example, eesel AI’s pricing is simple, and you can even start with a monthly plan you can cancel if it’s not a fit.
Unlocking customer engagement with AI as Kimberly Boyd of Thoughtworks shows how AI enables personalization at scale and deeper customer insights.
Lessons from these customer engagement examples: It’s all about being personal and efficient
If there’s one thing to take away from these customer engagement examples, it’s this: you don’t have to pick between being personal and being efficient anymore. The brands that are pulling ahead are doing both, usually by using technology in a smart way. The end goal is to make the customer experience so smooth and helpful that your customers end up being your biggest fans.
Want to see how this could work for your support team? With eesel AI, you can get an AI agent up and running in a few minutes, trained on your own business knowledge. It’s a straightforward way to start automating those repetitive questions and give your team more time for the work that matters most.
Start your free trial or book a demo today.
Frequently asked questions
Focus on high-impact, low-cost strategies first. Building a unique brand personality on social media like Wendy’s costs very little, while implementing an AI agent for support can be a highly efficient investment that saves time and scales easily.
The principles are universal, even if the execution differs. A B2B company can emulate Grammarly’s value-driven nurturing through expert content and webinars, or use AI support to provide instant, accurate answers to complex client questions.
Your metrics should match your goal. For a community strategy like Sephora’s, track member growth and user-generated content. For AI support, monitor ticket resolution times, automation rate, and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
Absolutely. Technology is a powerful enabler, but the strategy comes first. Wendy’s success is built on creativity and tone of voice, which doesn’t require complex tech, proving that a clever idea can be just as impactful.
The common thread is that they all make the customer feel seen and understood. Whether it’s through personalization, community, or solving a problem, the best engagement strategies create a genuine, helpful connection with the individual.
