Is Customer Service Part Of Marketing? How?

In the past, customers purchased products or services based on cost, quality, and durability, but now the overall customer experience plays a significant role in driving sales. Companies today understand the importance of customer service and are investing in continuous improvement to maximise their customer lifetime value and market their business.

Marketing and customer service are two different departments with separate job responsibilities. Traditionally, the first focuses on selling a product, while the latter delivers support after a purchase. Encouraging communication and collaboration between the teams will keep employees updated regarding customers’ experiences and improve workflow.

What is marketing?

Marketing is a wide term that includes different processes such as researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services. The main objective is to convert prospects into customers. Marketing is not limited to acquiring customers; it focuses on retaining customers by continuously evaluating customer experience and creating better services.

What is customer service?

Customer service means providing professional advice to those who purchase or use a company's products or services. Generally, customer service is considered a help desk where a person reaches out to a company with a problem, but that's only a part of the service. A product specification or availability discussion is also customer service even though that person isn’t even a customer yet. It begins right from when a person decides to make a purchase and continues as long as they use the product or service. Assistance can be delivered through many different media, such as phone calls and text messages, or through online customer service media such as online chat, social media, and more.

What is the importance of customer service?

The primary importance of customer service is to be ahead of competitors. A customer can switch to your competitor after having just one bad experience. Moreover, negative feedback can affect a larger customer base. Customers expect high-quality service all the time. Hence, it's essential to deliver good customer support to increase customer loyalty and generate positive word-of-mouth about your business. Delivering exceptional customer service is the key to ensuring a first-class customer experience.

Customer service emphasis achieving and maintaining a continuous positive long-term relationship. A personalised service converts loyal customers into brand advocates. It provides high-quality support and service at each touchpoint, from the first interaction with the customer, and is continued after-sale, e.g. promoting service expansion. It's essential to work towards eliminating customer dissatisfaction.

What is online customer service?

Innovative technology has made it easier for organisations to improve or maintain a good customer service culture, increasing the number of interactions between customers and companies. Online customer service examples can include standardised email templates to help representatives automate communications for different support situations. Also, advancements such as mobile apps and chatbots deliver an immediate response to general queries, reducing time spent by customers and representatives dealing with simple issues.

How does customer service benefit marketing?

By working collaboratively, the customer service team and marketing team can help the organisation identify soon-to-be customers and those customers who can be brand advocates. Customer service teams should communicate the information received and recorded regarding customer interest, behaviour, and feedback to the marketing team.

Benefits of collaborating customer service team and marketing team

1. Happy customers promote brands

Yes, customers with positive experiences promote brand awareness. Customers share their customer service experience, recommend the brand by speaking, writing online reviews, and commenting on social platforms. It improves brand reputation, which in turn generates new customers.

2. Excellent service retains customers and increases revenue

Skilled customer service representatives can help build a life-long relationship between the customer and your business. Customers shop more frequently and spend more money on brands when assured they will be provided support constantly.  

3. Increases scope of improvement

Customers are usually asked to fill out survey forms regarding the product or experience. The customer service team can ask these questions directly while interacting. The valuable feedback provides insights about the products, marketing strategies, goals, and more. Real-time data sharing can facilitate timely management of the problem and save business reputation.

4. Combines communication and information

Usually, customers reach out to the customer service team regarding new marketing offers or promotions as the number is easily available on most business' websites. Therefore, customer service representatives are communicated about the marketing activities to be equipped to answer any queries asked by prospects and current customers.

5. Facilitates content creation

The marketing team creates regular and consistent content to keep customers engaged and updated about the brand. It is essential to deliver informative and high-quality content. Discussion between the customer service representatives and sales members can help facilitate blog and social media content ideas based on direct communications with customers and prospects.

6. Generates product marketing opportunities

Proactive customer service is about reaching out to customers facing issues rather than awaiting them to report them. This technique can be used as an effective marketing tool for introducing and promoting new products and services. For example, the team can look out in their database to face a certain issue and introduce them to the new feature/product to resolve the issue. Often such an approach can be more effective than a sales pitch as customers feel like their needs are understood and better managed by customer service representatives.

How does CRM improve customer experience?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a strategy to analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. CRM systems can improve customer service, sales, and marketing. It equips customer service representatives with exhaustive information on customers' personal information, buying preferences,  purchase history, and distress. This data enables them to offer relevant service, personalise communication and respond quickly to requests.  

Conclusion

Marketing promotes potential customers to get on board. Customer service nurtures customer relationships. Acquiring new customers requires spending a generous amount of time and resources. Although businesses have to attract new customers constantly, the priority should be on pleasing and retaining the existing customer base. As loyal customers generate more profits as well as promote the business.

Also read:

1) 10 Best Ways to Promote Your Small Business
2) How Many Social Media Sites Can I Promote My Online Business On?
3) Online Business Ideas You Can Start Quickly
4) 8 Online Business Ideas That Could Make You Hit Gold in 2020
5) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

FAQs

Q. How can customer service representatives better assist customers interested in purchasing a product or service?

Ans. Customer service representatives daily support customers to resolve problems related to a purchased product. They should possess excellent persuasive speaking skills and be educated about the new product or service. This can help increase sales by empowering them to answer customer queries about a new launch.

Q. What is the difference between customer service and customer support?

Ans. Customer support is associated with helping customers on how to use products and services aptly. It involves technical problem solving, troubleshooting, and finding new solutions and answers.
Customer service is about assisting a customer through the entire customer lifecycle. It is the assistance provided by a company to its customers while they interact with the brand.  

Q. How can the customer service team deliver social media customer support?

Ans. Marketing teams use social media to engage with their customers and promote new products or services. But they aren't capable of handling customer service issues on social media platforms. Customer service teams are given proper training and resources needed to assist customers and resolve issues. Improving collaboration can help marketers discuss social media customer issues with the customer service team to better customer experience.

Q. How will happy customer service employees create happy customers?

Ans. The customer service team deals with both happy and angry customers the entire day. The team needs constant motivation to understand the importance of customer service and deliver good service. They should be respected and appreciated for doing a good job and serving their customers the right way. This, in turn, leads to your customers feeling more respected and appreciated.

Q. How does customer service reduce negative word of mouth?

Ans. An unhappy customer will share his or her experience with friends and family. The customer service team plays a significant role by hearing out the customer’s bad experience and providing immediate resolution to prevent negative word of mouth of the product, services, or the brand itself.