Making Marketing and Customer Service Work Together

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Imagine this: your marketing team crafts a beautiful campaign, promising the world to potential customers. But when those excited prospects turn into actual customers, they hit a brick wall at customer service. Confused, frustrated, and frankly, disappointed, they walk away with a sour taste in their mouths.

That is the painful reality when marketing and customer service operate in silos. It is like pouring sugar in your coffee with one hand while adding vinegar with the other. The result? A bitter mess that nobody enjoys.

But it doesn't have to be this way. In fact, when marketing and customer service work together, it's a match made in brand heaven. They become two sides of the same coin, each amplifying the other's success. Here's how:

1. United Voice, Strong Brand: Marketing tells the story, and customer service makes it real. By sharing customer insights and feedback with marketing, you ensure your messaging resonates with real needs and pain points. This creates a consistent brand voice across all touchpoints, building trust and loyalty.

2. Targeted Content, Satisfied Customers: Customer service is a treasure trove of data on what customers love (and hate) about your product. Leverage this knowledge to create targeted content that addresses their concerns and highlights the value you offer. Think FAQs, tutorials, and educational blog posts – content that empowers customers and reduces support tickets.

3. Seamless Onboarding, Happy Advocates: Marketing gets customers through the door, but customer service ensures they stay. By collaborating on onboarding experiences, you can eliminate friction and confusion, turning first-time users into lifelong fans. Think personalized welcome emails, helpful product demos, and proactive outreach from the customer service team.

4. Real-Time Feedback Loop, Constant Improvement: Marketing campaigns live and die by data. But what if you could see how they actually impact the customer experience? By integrating customer support data into your marketing analytics, you get a real-time feedback loop. This allows you to refine your campaigns, optimize messaging, and ensure you're attracting the right audience.

5. Brand Ambassadors Arise: Happy customers don't just stay around, they sing your praises to the world. Customer service interactions are golden opportunities to turn customers into brand ambassadors. Empower your support team to go the extra mile, exceed expectations, and create stories that marketing can amplify.

Making marketing and customer service work together is not just about improving efficiency; it is about creating a seamless customer journey that fosters trust, loyalty, and advocacy. It is about breaking down the silos and fostering a culture of collaboration. And the rewards? Stronger brand identity, happier customers, and ultimately, a business that thrives on the synergy of its efforts.

So, what are you waiting for? Go forth, break down the walls, and unleash the power of your united marketing and customer service team. Your brand (and your customers) will thank you for it.

Customer service: the great rotation

The customer service "great rotation" is inspired from the investment community's current hot topic whereby worldwide money managers may reallocate part of their assets towards more risky investments, for example switching from fixed income instruments to equities. This is done in order to benefit from higher equity yields especially given that interest rates will have to stay low for a while to fuel the economic recovery. This is compounded by the perception that interest rates can not really go lower and, as and when they start to increase, the fixed income instruments will suddenly lose a lot of value.

We could write ten blog posts about this topic alone but the interesting analogy is that we believe that a completely opposite movement could be emerging in customer service, whereby companies engage in a great rotation, reducing spend in marketing (risky) to invest more in customer service (safe). The economic benefits of such an approach could be very tangible, with a strong focus on customer retention rather than customer acquisition. If conducted effectively, the benefits of recommendations from satisfied customers would be enough to generate growth and attract new customers. So why not review the relative risk reward benefits of marketing and customer service and use the results to develop the case for the great rotation.

Picture credit: http://www.davidharber.co.uk/ with our thanks

Bread and butter customer service

Is it the end of bread and butter service? The increasing sophistication of marketing tools and techniques mean that many businesses have upped their game to improve the shopping experience they offer to their customers.
These activities can lead to the creation of extra layers of costs and inefficiencies which are not always fully valued by the customers. As a result they develop a bargain hunting instinct whereby they wait for heavy promotional periods and sales during which they are prepared to buy at what they believe is a fair price. In turn, such behaviour leads retailers to invest in yet more marketing tools to game the system and increase prices so that they can be better discounted later. Complicated and confusing. So wouldn't it be better to adopt a simpler approach, cut out the fuss and make sure that the service delivery to clients is of quality but simple enough so that it does not take too much value away from the product.

Picture courtesy of Peter's Yard with our thanks 

Customer service tips

Customer service tips

Treat your customers the way you would like to be treated;

Integrate your customer service with your marketing effort, making it a value-added activity;

Pull your weight as good customer service requires dedication and,

Stand out to make sure your efforts are noticed

Picture courtesy of Hargreaves Plants with our thanks

to be continued...

More customer service tips

 Having put together our top five customer service tips a little while ago, we though it would be worthwhile adding to the original list. At the moment, the only certainty is that there are plenty of them. Whilst we build a list, please do leave us a comment below to suggest some tips to be added to the list. Thank you







There are many resources on the internet providing lists of steps to go through if you (and your employees) want to provide a great service to your customers:
We will suggest some further reading to do if you are interested in the topic. To quick start the list here are a few suggestions:
-  Tips for empowering customer service employees

Customer service success

Customer service success should be celebrated. Why not send away your customer service team to one of the 5 star best hotel getaways so that they can celebrate their success in style, maybe with a bottle of Champagne? Customer service success only comes after a lot of innovation, passion and hard work. If your organisation is successfully delivering its customer service strategy it is critical that the teams responsible are properly thanked and rewarded in the same way as sales and marketing teams are. The benefits of a successful customer relationship management strategy are well known but often under-stated. Isn't it time to adopt a new approach?

Customer farming

customer service farm

The farming community knows a thing or two about delivering real results despite unpredictable and changing market conditions. The parallels which exist between agriculture and customer service and marketing are not used enough and yet they could assist in the design and delivery of a clear customer-focused strategy. Chose the best food to grow, select the crops, prepare the soil, plant the seeds, use (or not) fertilizers, provide water when needed, harvest, select, calibrate, taste, store... Wouldn't it be great if our local farmers could engage in workshops to develop these simple concepts and help us adapt them to the way we handle customers. Unfortunately they are far too busy producing tangible results.....the first lesson maybe?

Picture courtesy of http://www.berryscrumptious.co.uk with our thanks

Why is customer service so important?

The importance of customer service

We were interviewed by Social Small Biz on the topic. Here is the link to the post:

http://www.socialsmallbiz.com/2010/03/22/why-is-customer-service-so-important/

A lot has already been written about customer service and I will not attempt to give you the full 50 pages answer: that can easily be found in text books. Instead I would like to focus on 3 aspects which all have critical impact on the financial health of a business.The first point is that customer service can be instrumental in managing the price sensitivity of customers. At a time when the economy is struggling and the fiscal pressure is increasing, everyone wants a good deal, but the explosion of voucher sites, discount codes and special sales is disorientating customers. They do not know when to shop, are constantly being moved around by comparator sites and