Customer Service + Marketing = Improved Customer Experience

Unlike the customer service team, the marketing team isn’t convincing prospects in real-time to increase their order value or add another product to their carts. If anything, they come up with interesting social media marketing and customer service strategies to encourage people and add product combinations or even upgrade to a premium version of a certain plan. Besides improving collaboration between the marketing and customer service teams, there is another pivotal reason for them to work together – create a seamless customer service experience. We’ll discuss how the two teams can work together to create better experiences for your customers. Customer service is the support you offer your customers — both before and after they buy and use your products or services — that helps them have an easy, enjoyable experience with your brand.

It’s undeniable that a well-trained, positive customer service team can make your company the best version of itself. Their ability to communicate directly with customers can revolutionize your company and grow your customer base. Customers not only enjoy using these channels but, over time, they’ll expect them as a standard in the customer service industry.

62% of consumers think businesses can do more in terms of personalization because they’d prefer to feel like an experience is all about them. While many companies provide multi-channel service by offering customers a variety of communication channels, omnichannel service is different. It goes beyond siloed service channels via integration that provides agents with a single desktop with contextual information about the customer and recommended solutions to speed resolutions.

Use customer service insights for paid ad copy

People don’t just expect your business to have a customer service team; they anticipate your customer service team to be world-class and ready to help at a moment’s notice. Despite this fact, not enough companies take employee satisfaction seriously—particularly in the case of customer service employees. According to our 2022 State of Customer Service report, almost 40% of customer service leaders say that their company views customer service as an expense rather than a driver for growth.

The great thing is, your team is talking to customers all the time, meaning you probably know more about them than any other department within your company. Marketers can sit in on customer team meetings and join in on customer calls for better insight into the personas you’re marketing to. Successful marketers understand how important regular and consistent content creation is to their marketing strategy. Coming up with a system that enables members of your customer service team to participate in customer service-related inquiries via social media will only make for a better customer experience. Beyond adding incremental revenue, customer service can support your business strategy.

What are key customer service job skills that service reps need?

We know that the customer service team does this proactively while they are in conversation with one of the customers. Understand that you’re not just using customer service as a marketing strategy here. This will help the customer service team to reduce complaints and at the same time help marketing teams understand if the content they’re working on is targeting the right audience or not.

Testimonials will come from loyal customers who you work with frequently, and on a more in-depth level. With frequent contact with customers, they can identify any good candidates for a testimonial and reach out to them with this request. For that reason, you need to have a proper process and decision-making patterns in place so that your customer service team always feels prompt and efficient in handling customer interactions. It also means you need to motivate customer service team, train them well to figure out and act on opportunities to improve customer service. Bringing customer service and marketing together has many advantages for your business. Delightful customer service could motivate someone to leave an online review, and a wealth of positive reviews builds a business’s credibility.

With our commitment to quality and integrity, you can be confident you’re getting the most reliable resources to enhance your customer support initiatives. But churn occurs when a customer stops doing business with a brand and it’s often because of a poor customer service experience. Our State of Service report also found that all of the high-growth companies surveyed implemented several channels and tools, empowering their customer service teams and improved customer service. For better or worse, your most impacted customers will do word-of-mouth advertising for you. In fact, 66% of salespeople say that the highest quality leads come from existing customers.

But instead of making assumptions about your ideal customer, you can study customer experiences and purchase habits to learn who is buying from your business and why. You’ll have a deeper understanding of your customers’ needs, interests and pain points. With that knowledge, you can create content and products that appeal to your target customer and sell from a more informed place.

Once you have select the metrics that are most important to you, you can invite team members to your Metrics Screen to verify your data. Your team members will also have the ability to add to your Metrics Screen with the metrics that they believe are important to track. If marketing teams create actionable content that talks about the benefits of integrating a specific tool with another, then they are creating opportunities for upsell and cross-sell. These opportunities can turn out to be prospects once they contact the customer service team for more information.

Offer Proactive Customer Service with Live Chat

Building a customer loyalty program is a key way to keep loyal customers engaged with your brand. Customer service is also a differentiator that sets your brand apart from competitors that offer similar products or services. Service teams not only answer questions; they make each experience personalized to the customer.

Applying customer service elements to your social media pages can create an engaging, informative experience for customers. When there is a customer service process, the team will find it easy to maintain the required flow of support, handle customers efficiently and ensure a great experience. With interactive communities, brands always have the opportunity to listen to their customers, develop the next focused marketing strategy, or even the next product. Live engagement tools answer customers’ immediate need for quick resolutions to issues. You can easily WOW your customers by using live engagement tools and deliver an interactive service experience. Many businesses make the mistake of focussing only on customer acquisition while neglecting the need of keeping the existing customers happy.

In fact, 96% of people say customer service plays a role in their choice of and loyalty to a brand. Rather than investing in some other channels, it would be great if you took customer service seriously and leveraged its potential in the true sense. Customers usually want to deal with an expert agent so that they get their problem resolved at the first touchpoint. Empowering your employees to deliver the best service to the customers will help avoid negative experiences and win new customers for your business.

Service marketing is rooted in value creation for prospects and customers that isn’t as tangible as the value created from purchasing and using a product. At most companies, customer service representatives are the only employees who have direct contact with buyers or users. The buyers’ perceptions of the company and the product are shaped in part by their experience in dealing with that person. In fact, 77% of customers said they would recommend a brand to a friend after having a single positive customer service experience. But beyond providing excellent support to your existing customers, social media can be used to show future customers what they can expect. Unlike reviews, testimonials tend to come from your more loyal, long-term customers.

Research shows that companies that invest in customer experience also see employee engagement rates increase by an average of 20%. In an era where companies are learning to prioritize customer service, any company that doesn’t do so will crash and burn. Moreover, one positive experience could make them stick to a brand, whereas one negative interaction could send them running to a competitor. The importance of customer service shouldn’t be underestimated, so your support team should be one of those teams.

Consider cross-training employees and having your marketers sit on support calls with customers. Take advantage of internal communication apps and the best CRM software to keep all departments informed in real time and coordinate actions. For example, if a customer calls customer service with a promotional question, the answer may need a follow-up from marketing.

There are many other benefits your company stands to reap by aligning customer service and marketing efforts. Increasing word-of-mouth marketing and getting glowing reviews from customers are two of the best ways to cut marketing costs. Instead of spending money on ad campaigns, you can reallocate it to make improvements in customer service software, shipping processes, etc. These are expenditures that benefit the customer, which in turn help the company in the long run.

You can’t assign complaints to your customer support team and engagement posts to your marketing team. That’s because you lose on time and effort to first identify what kind of post has the customer tagged you in and then come up with a solution for it. When customers have a poor customer service experience, they’re more likely to quickly share about it and leave the company than in previous years.

There are some best practices of retail customer service that can be applied to marketing as well. For example, you shouldn’t restrict marketing to a single platform just like customer service. You need to have access to different platforms that help you capture customer attention and boost engagement.

Customer service affects your brand image and loyalty potential.

Around 80% of consumers say they would rather switch over to a competitor after more than one bad experience. Similarly, the video chat function enables face-to-face interaction and enables agents to acquire information about the customer issue and provide faster solutions. With such engagement results, it’ll become easier for your business to give your employees workplace satisfaction and motivate them to do better going forward. A great example of this is how Netflix is combining customer service and product promotions with its social accounts.

USAA’s success is attributed to its customer-centric model, treating its users as members of a family instead of paying customers. As a result, their product offerings reflect what their “family members” need in various life situations, instead of cookie-cutter customer service in marketing insurance and financial products that could be found elsewhere. Behind the scenes, the company emphasizes employee involvement to keep staff motivated and ensure departments work cooperatively to provide customers the service they deserve.

Like PB&J: Customer Service as a Marketing Strategy

Customer support representatives should have accurate promotional and product documentation on hand, courtesy of the marketing team. That’s why it’s vital to align customer service with your marketing and sales teams to accomplish customer support goals. By encouraging collaboration across these departments, you can increase revenue while decreasing overall marketing and customer acquisition costs – and help ensure the longevity of your business too. In order to improve collaboration, it’s important to determine a few shared metrics and goals to ensure both teams are focused on the same outcomes. With this, customer service and marketing teams can combine skill sets in order to achieve tasks. The Metrics Screen in Databox helps organizations align team members around the same metrics.

Once your marketing and customer service teams do start working together, your organization will almost automatically begin seeing improvements across the board. Your business can use the features of live chat to understand customers’ pain points and provide the help that aligns with their expectations, which improves customer experience. Empowering the customer support team means giving Chat PG them the freedom to access technology and other ways to deliver excellent customer service to make customers happy. The pairing of customer service and marketing objectives can help accelerate business growth and achieve the goals faster. In fact, making excellent customer service a part of your marketing strategy can make your customers stick and become your brand evangelists.

Both of these measurements indicate that the company excels at customer experience and is more likely to be recommended by satisfied customers. There are a lot of brands that are already working towards improving customer service via their social media marketing platforms. Your business can respond to customer complaints and offer solutions when customers tag your brand in their statuses. You can even let your customer know that the solution is on its way and they won’t be facing the same problem again. This practice instills trust and loyalty for not only that customer who complained but also for those who follow your brand on social media platforms. This is where the customer service team can share these misleading expectations with the marketers who can leverage this data to modify their strategies.

53% of customers are likely to ditch the purchase midway if they don’t get quick answers to their questions. So much so, it’s 6 times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. This strategy won’t serve in the long run when seen in the light of how building strong relationships and connecting with customers encourages faster growth. Great customer service gives you a competitive edge because it keeps consumers spending their money with you and referring others to do the same. Transparency benefits your business because it ensures everyone is on the same page and can reduce mistakes that could affect whether or not a customer sticks with your business.

Customer service employees can offer important insights about customer experiences.

Not only does it make sense from a tactical standpoint, the collaboration between two key departments – marketing and customer service – is essential. This can help them create canned messages that reduce the response time and enable operators to resolve a problem faster. And in case your live chat also integrates with a knowledge base just like ProProfs Chat does, then it’s easy to create new help center articles that will be visible in the chat widget. It’s not just the marketing team that needs to know about the right buyer persona. Your customer service team should also know who you’re targeting and how your brand can help them out. Well, we’d suggest you to have an open conversation for better customer service and marketing alignment first.

This means that your company’s reputation for customer service will impact a large majority of potential customers. Customer service team members are on the frontlines, communicating daily with current and potential customers. As a result of this proximity, customer service can offer valuable insight that can help improve marketing outcomes. Customer service makes new customers more trustworthy of your business and allows you to upsell and cross-sell additional products with less friction.

Being customer service oriented means prioritizing the needs of the customer ahead of the needs of the business. A service oriented business understands that customer experience takes priority over profit. Here, 16 members of Forbes Communications Council offer ways on how both customer service and marketing blend well and how it’s beneficial to a brand. Most successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.

Customers aren’t only looking for quality products or services, but also expect a high level of support and care from businesses. Marketers should arm the customer support team with the resources they need to be successful. At HubSpot, for example, we keep a shared Google Doc where our support team can access the links and log-in information for every upcoming webinar we host. This eliminates the wasted time and effort of customer support reps trying to contact the marketing team while a caller waits on hold, making for a happier caller and a more efficient support process.

Affiliate marketing encourages individuals (affiliates) to promote your brand in exchange for a commission; this usually happens when people buy a product or sign up for a service. Your team can ask while wrapping up conversations in a chat box or in a follow-up email. Links for reviews should be readily available, easy to access, and of course given to the customer when they are in an optimistic mood about their experience. This means…any customer issue you resolve… any product help you provide… any interaction that ends with “you answered all my questions” …is marketing.

Being proactive, not taking anything personally, and following up are also some examples of good customer service. This led many companies to implement systems online and by phone that answer as many questions or resolve as many problems as they can without https://chat.openai.com/ a human presence. But in the end, there are customer service issues for which human interaction is indispensable, creating a competitive advantage. Additionally, social media is an effective channel for communicating need-to-know information.

These efforts will help the marketing team to attract the right audience and provide the best product offers that match their buyer’s expectations. The content efforts would be more streamlined and they’ll be able to help product teams to work on better strategies to launch the next product. Your existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product and spend 31% more money on it than a new customer, while new customers are only 5-20% likely to buy a product. But for those existing customers to stay long enough to consider a new product, it takes effort via customer service to keep them satisfied. 71% of consumers cited poor customer service as the reason they ended a relationship with a company. Regular meetings between members of marketing and customer success teams will help avoid situations where marketing is promoting a product feature that is underutilized by or unsatisfying to customers.

In any business, customer service and marketing should have a harmonious relationship. Think of these aspects of your company as going hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly. The ultimate goal of customer service is to improve the customer experience, and a marketing strategy focused on customer retention may spark more sales. According to OutboundEngine, increasing customer retention by just 5% can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in profits. Besides that, both customer service and marketing teams can identify and create effective content strategies that fill the knowledge gap for both the teams.

Growing this value means your customers shop more frequently or spend more money at your business. Let’s explore hard data regarding how the modern consumer prefers to shop and do business. The brands with the best customer service in 2023 are great examples – but a down economy may lead to service cuts. If you support your customers when times are difficult, it’s highly likely they’ll stick with you for the long term. Today, the explosion of e-commerce, mobile devices, and social media has created a multitude of ways for customers to connect.

According to a research, 88% of consumers consider online customer service reviews when making a buying decision. Instead, you want to be better than every other company you’re competing with and want your customers to know it, too. That’s the key to keeping customers loyal and getting them to interact with your brand continuously. Conversely, when your company’s customer service is excellent, you’re more likely to see your customers stick around and eventually try more of your offerings. When humans have a memorable experience—good or bad—it’s natural to want to shout about it from the rooftops.

Bad customer service is any communication or experience where a consumer feels as though they are let down. This includes negative experiences, such as long wait or hold times, not being able to speak to an agent, being transferred many times, or not being heard. This can lead customers to provide negative reviews and/or begin shopping with a competitor. Amid COVID-19, Deciem used online content to create an exceptional customer experience. Customers were able to speak directly with Deciem representatives digitally, allowing them to ask questions just like they would if they were shopping in person.

Online reviews play an important role in both your customer service and marketing strategy. Creating customer content is an on-going tasks for both customer service and marketing. Turn these happy customers into brand advocates with an affiliate marketing program. Similar to reviews, customer testimonials gives validity and instills trust in your brand. It’s also a way to make your product or services relatable, as potential customers can explicitly see how others have benefitted.

Spending my days writing marketing content, cycling around canals in Amsterdam, and attempting to master the Dutch language. For more marketing tips, including how to start your own affiliate marketing program, be sure to check out our blog here. Include the name, a photo, and the company logo of the customer who gave the testimonial.

Understand that besides your delighted customers, happier employees also act as business promoters in the market. In fact, employees who are engaged more are likely to improve customer relationships, with a resulting 20% increase in sales. Understand that such good interactions encourage customers to spread the word about your efforts to create an awesome experience for them online. The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business.

Both marketing and support teams will know what’s already been discussed with a given customer, as well as what the customer expects to happen next. Not only does this result in less repetition and back-and-forth, it also ensures no steps are skipped during the process of onboarding and providing service to your customers. Additionally, teams that don’t communicate with each other run the risk of bothering and annoying their customers by reaching out multiple times for the same reason. Say a soon-to-be customer explains their problem to a company’s marketing team and decides to become a paying customer, only to be contacted by the support team and asked to explain their problem again.

• Recognizing the importance of department interplay and the value such internal communications can have on building consumer relationships is the first step in creating an internal marketing powerhouse.
• Not only will this lead to frustration on the customer’s end, it wastes time for everyone involved.
• Customer service and marketing go together in many ways that help communications professionals.
• They are also often the best equipped and first to identify cases of customer happiness and success.

Rather than having each channel operate independently, the channels link together so they can share messages and information freely. That way, customers don’t have to navigate away from what they’re doing to get help from your business. They can use your CRM or ticketing system to look up customers who have had this problem in the past, reach out to them via the service ticket, and introduce the new feature and its benefits.

Not only does this provide good customer service to existing customers, it also shows potential customers that you are accessible and responsive. You’ll also want to collect and assess any qualitative data your customers provide with regard to their experiences with your organization. That information will help both teams identify areas in need of improvement, and it will enable them to collaborate to make improvements. Customer service should always be a crucial part of your market customer acquisition strategy. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. If you’re giving great experiences to customers, they will stick with your business and create positive brand awareness about you.