So what is engagement?

Customer engagement is not a complex concept but at the same time, it is difficult to define.
It is the ability of an organisation to build long-term beneficial relationships with its customers. This encompasses a number of dimensions from brand awareness and corporate culture, breadth and accuracy of customer data, breadth of services, range of interaction channels, architectural and technical readiness, and the abiity to develop closed-loop interactions with customers.
Equally, but much more difficult, is to measure the emotional attachment customers feel towards a business, if at all. Do customers simply see the relationship at a transactional level, or do they have a sense of belonging or loyalty?.
Do they feel committed to the relationship sufficiently enough to recommend the business to a colleague?.
The starting point is a measure of the current level of engagement as compared to the vision of the desired engagement level?