A business isn’t a business without customer service of some kind.
Whether it’s by word of mouth, social media, or otherwise, customer service is a key part of building a business and managing to keep customers coming back time after time. Not only is it an incentive to keep business, it’s an incentive to gain new business, given that customers are more likely to continue business with a company if they have a positive experience with its customer service representatives.
There’s much that goes into the busy, crazy world of customer service. But an essential role that frequently gets ignored is the role that the marketing team plays. When the two teams work together, processes get streamlined, productivity increases, and in the end it can contribute to a revenue boost.
Here are four key reasons that your marketing team and your customer service team should collaborate.
1. No One Knows Your Customers Like Customer Service Reps
With the amount of time that your customer service reps spend speaking to your customers, it goes without saying that they are the ones that know them the best. They have, through hours and hours of communication, built up an idea of the kinds of people that are going through your company’s consumer experience. Knowing what customers have responded to best and what they’ve responded to negatively will allow your marketing team to market to customers in the most effective way.
Learning this information and piecing it all together results in what is called a buyer persona – a semi-fictional representation of what the company’s ideal customer is, based on research and data that customer service teams gather. Not only is this information crucial in terms of consumer experience, this could also be something that could change the way that the business moves forward. When formulating new products, this information helps the company know what their ideal customers are looking for. New ideas can be born out of comments that come from customers, and one comment could lead to a new business idea that pushes the entire enterprise in an entirely new direction.
2. Communication Between Teams Can Change Outcomes
Everyone has had an experience with a company where they were promised something by a commercial, and then they later found out that what they were promised isn’t actually possible. It’s something that can drive new customers away from the company entirely, but it can also cause long-standing customers to take a second look at what they’re being promised and what is actually being given to them.
By having the marketing and customer service teams communicating regularly, the customer service team can tell the marketing team what exactly is feasible, and what isn’t. This will keep mishaps from happening and will keep all customers happy. As time goes on, customer opinions can change. The customer service team can point the marketing team in the new direction that the customers heading. Maintaining that open communication allows advertising to adjust to new times.
3. Better Results Come From Collaboration on Social Media
Today’s day and age is ruled by social media. Not only is it a veritable gold mine in terms of being able to market directly to customers new and old, it is a whole new platform for customer service representatives and marketing personnel to interact with their consumers.
The marketing team has the capability to release new campaigns directly to the public and see an instant and direct response to what they’re marketing, allowing them to base future ideas off of that response. More than that, it’s a whole new way for customers to reach out for support. Even if customer service teams don’t have access to the social media accounts, training marketing employees to forward on customer information through the correct channels can be an easy and effective way to increase customer service support ratings.
4. Marketing Customer Service Makes You Stand Out
Very few ad campaigns are based on customer service. Companies tend to market ideas, products, or new technologies. They very rarely explicitly outline just how good their customer service department is. When customer service is at the forefront of the ideals that a company is presenting, it will draw the attention of those that are looking for an experience with a company that they know they can rely on.
When a marketing team has come to know the customer service team and they open an honest channel of communication, it allows them to accurately market what the customer service team is capable of, and present to the consumer exactly what they can expect when it comes to assistance.
The phrase teamwork makes the dream work is corny and cheesy, but in this case it is wholly accurate. Customer service and marketing teams work together in so many different ways; in many ways that most companies don’t even realize! The above four steps are just a few ways that a little interaction between teams could result in a complete change to a business’s outlook.
