The customer (or consumer) service department in many organizations is often one of the biggest overlooked marketing tools.
Who else has direct contact with the end users? Ed Moed, author of Measuring Up, insists that customer service is the cheapest form of marketing.
For the B-B company who deals directly with customers, a customer service representative has the perfect opportunity to strengthen a relationship with someone who works at a company that may be responsible for thousands of dollars, if not millions, of your company’s revenues.
For the consumer products company, often the consumer service department is the only group that talks directly with the end users. Even the market research department is usually sitting behind a one way glass when they view focus groups!
There are lots of examples of how bad customer service can lose a customer, but how can you use your customer service department to strengthen your marketing program?
Photo courtesy JM3 at Flickr via creative commons.
I seem to be constantly arguing with the folks in customer service!Why? Because they hate their job! If employers looked into this for e.g. by giving them more money or making their job more exciting then perhaps customer service employees would be more pleasant!
Hey there,
This is Caroline from SocialRank.
I am trying to get in touch with you but couldn’t find your email address.
We’re launching a new Web 2.0 site dedicated to Marketing and we have started indexing your blog posts as part of our
content filter.
I’d like to send you an invite to a beta preview. Can you get back to me with your email address.
Mine is [email protected]
Kind regards,
Caroline
http://www.SocialRank.com
Lolly:
I think you are right. One company I’ve heard about who is doing it right with customer service has empowered every employee in the company to make adjustments for a customer within $2000. Wow. They’ve got to have a good training program in place to keep from huge unexpected “$2000-making-the-customer-happy-expenses.”
Chris
Caroline:
You didn’t look very hard if you wanted my email or my phone number. Just click on my company’s link and then contact me. When I clicked on your website, I can’t see a darned thing without registering… leading me to believe that you are just spamming my comments to gain page rank for your site. Call me if you’re serious.
Chris