Home Blog 7 reasons why marketing and customer service should work in tandem
Date
January 24, 2022
Author
Sunny

7 reasons why marketing and customer service should work in tandem

In today’s world of Internet technologies, marketing and customer service should go hand in hand and cooperate as much as possible. It will help to competently build relationships with customers. In this article, we will discuss seven reasons that speak in favor of such an interaction.

If your marketers are unaware of what’s going on “on the front line” of the support team, and support is unaware of the marketing efforts, it’s time to fix it. 

Today, when customers are increasingly turning to the company through social media, the need for coordinated marketing and customer service is greater than ever. In a recent study by Booz & Company, 75% of marketers using social media said they primarily act as a customer service channel.

However, according to the same study, only 26% of respondents say that the customer service department is involved in creating and implementing a social media strategy. Something doesn’t add up, right?

The described example confirms that in today’s world of Internet technologies, marketing and customer service should go hand in hand and cooperate as much as possible. It will help to competently build relationships with customers. In this article, we will discuss seven reasons that speak in favor of such an interaction.

1. Improving the quality of customer service

As mentioned above, most marketers recognize that a company’s social media is used primarily as a customer service channel. However, the main question is this: can an SMM manager provide customer support at the same level as a customer service specialist? Most probably not. As a rule, employees of the client department are people who have certain skills in communicating with clients and solving their problems, which means that they are more competent in such work.

At the same time, it is obvious that the marketing department should manage social networks, since this is the area of ​​responsibility of promotion specialists. But this does not mean that other departments cannot do their part. Why doom your customers to imperfect service just to keep social media management solely with the marketing department?

Fortunately, there are many tools marketers can use today to make collaborative network management possible and easy. A specialist in the marketing department will be able to assign the incoming questions to the employees of the relevant services themselves, be it the customer service department or the sales department. Implementing a system that allows your customer service team members to respond to social media questions within their purview will improve the quality of your customer service.

2. New ideas

Any seasoned marketer will attest to how important regular and consistent content creation is to your marketing strategy. This means that marketing employees need a constant stream of ideas. At the same time, even the most experienced SMM specialists sometimes find themselves in a crisis situation, trying to come up with valuable and interesting content for their audience. This is where the customer service department can come to the rescue because these people constantly communicate with customers and learn about their problems, interests and needs.

Essentially, they are a treasure trove of valuable information that marketers can use in their content plan. The main goal of creating content for social networks is to meet the needs of the audience for certain information and help clients solve their problems. The support staff will certainly be able not only to tell about interesting situations but also to provide the marketing department with real examples from clients, that is, with unique information that, in the right hands, will turn into high-quality content.

Weekly marketing and customer service meetings will help you learn about the problems customers are facing and come up with new types of content to help solve them.

3. Better understanding of customer needs

How well do you understand your customers? If you put the two previous tips into practice, you will likely quickly find that you don’t know them as well as you thought.

At the same time, understanding the fundamentals of customer behavior and their motives for making a purchase provides a number of marketing benefits. For example, you can better understand their needs, concerns, and interests, and accordingly, improve the characteristics of your product and customer service.

This understanding can be fueled by the customer care professionals who communicate with customers every day and therefore know them better than anyone else in the company. Since a deep understanding of customer needs is a necessary part of a successful marketing strategy, the close collaboration between marketing and customer service seems logical. It is enough that at least one marketing professional is present at the weekly meetings of the client department – this will allow them to find out the real problems and needs of the clients in order to solve them through a marketing strategy.

4. Meeting customer expectations

One of the indicators of an effective marketing strategy is the correct customer expectations for your products or services. When a potential client has such expectations, then his interest can be turned into a desire, and a desire into a purchase. This is how marketing can prevent customer loss, as one of the most common reasons for this is a mismatch between expectations and reality. And this usually happens due to illiterate marketing campaigns.

How can customer service help in this situation? When two teams are working side by side, the customer service team can alert the marketing department when customers have false expectations, as they are likely to be encountered by the customer team. Marketers will be able to use this information to adjust their strategy and make qualitative changes to it.

5. Unified communication system

Who will a potential client call if they have a question about the marketing activities your specialists are organizing? Support service, of course. Simply because their phone number is easy to find on the website or other sites. This is where a misunderstanding can occur if your customer department doesn’t know anything about marketing. For example, a customer who can’t find a link to a webinar tonight calls. Instead of quickly providing them with information, the support specialist is at a loss, since they do not know anything about the event and are forced to ask for additional information, making the client wait.

This is why it is so important that the support team knows what advertising campaigns the marketing department is running. Then the customer service specialists will be well prepared to answer any questions that potential customers might have. They need to know where the necessary information is located on the site, how to access the webinar, participate in the competition, etc.

6. Research and reputation

Customer problems are not the only common issue that links marketing to customer service. Customer support most often knows best about what makes customers happy.

The joint work of the two departments solves another problem – it makes it easier to find clients who are suitable, for example, for conducting research. Especially if the marketing department is looking for buyers with certain problems or, conversely, satisfied with the service. Customer service can also reward satisfied customers to give feedback on a product or service, which will certainly play into the hands of the marketer and build an online reputation.

7. Strategy creation

Most likely, it’s the customer service department that knows best about how customers actually use your product or service. For many marketers, this information can come as a real surprise, as it may not exactly match their expectations.

Once again, cooperation between marketing and customer service will come to the rescue. Conduct regular meetings where representatives from both teams will be present. This will help avoid situations where marketing is actively promoting product features that are not used by customers. It is possible that, based on the results of such meetings, the marketing department will learn about new and unexpected ways to use your products or services.

Final Thought

The close collaboration of the marketing and customer service teams will help improve many of the processes in your company, increase customer satisfaction, which ultimately will bear fruit in the form of business development and growth.

If you’re looking for an experienced customer support team for your product or service, then you’ve come to the right place. You can book a quote with our managers by filling out the contact form.

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Date
January 24, 2022
Author
Sunny

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