PULLING YOUR WEIGHT
Have you ever rowed in a two-seater kayak? If so, you will have noticed that progress is severely hampered when both partners are not doing their fair share of the work. When one person is lazing around, the other is struggling to move her head and resentful of her partner’s lack of effort. The same goes for business. When marketing and customer service work together, each of their separate departments can see easy improvements, but when teamwork falls apart, the company can be pulled in different directions. Marketing and Customer Service must be great allies and enter into a partnership that helps promote both departments.
Customer service, what have you done for me lately?
Most marketers will agree that the best form of advertising is word of mouth. It is free and has more weight than any paid advertising. In a recent study by Zendesk and Dimensional Research, 87% of customers share good experiences with others, and 24% continue to engage with vendors two or more years after a good experience. On the other hand, 95% of customers share their bad experiences and those bad experiences are shared with more than five people. Therefore, it is imperative that we keep our customers happy, and the best employees to do so are those who interact with the customer on the front lines.
1. Keep existing customers happy.
When it comes to interacting with your customers, your Customer Service staff should be the most highly trained person on the payroll. It is the Customer Service department that has the most interaction. If the Customer Service department can use their training and experience to satisfy customers and keep them happy, customers will continue to do business with you.
Every customer that stays with a business is one less customer that marketing and sales staff have to chase down and re-engage. According to JoAnna Brandi’s The Real Costs of Losing Customers, it cost one of her financial clients $500 to get a new customer in the door, and 22% of them didn’t stick around for more than a year. For some of our readers, it costs dollars to get a new customer. For others, it’s thousands of dollars. For everyone, the numbers are impacting your bottom line.
2. Gather testimonials
Testimonials are a great form of advertising. Personal recommendations are the workhorse in the word-of-mouth category, and according to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Reevoo, 85% of consumers are influenced by ratings and reviews. Reviewscale tells us that products and services with reviews and testimonials have a 12.5% higher conversion rate than those without.
A testimonial is a formal statement attesting to a company’s qualifications. Of course, for marketing purposes, we only want to focus on positive statements and testimonials. For Customer Service professionals, getting testimonials for the marketing department may be easier than you think.
Have you ever had a customer end their conversation with “Fantastic. Thanks for your help”? When you have a positive interaction like that example, you can ask a follow-up question like “Thank you! It’s great to hear good things about our service.” And ask what they specifically liked about the service and your company. Ask how your company’s products help them.
Once you’ve heard another, more specific positive statement, ask if you can quote it on your website and marketing materials. Many customers see your questions as another example that your company goes above and beyond in customer service and they are happy and flattered to be included on your website. If they agree to let you use their testimonial, remember:
– Get a signed statement allowing you to use your words on your website
– Obtain permission to use your name, business name, position, etc. with the testimony
– keep it short
3. Keep your ear to the ground
Finally, report what you’re hearing from customers to the marketing department. As the “face” of the organization and the department with the most customer interaction, you are the first to know about problems with a product or service. You are the first to know what product features customers want. Simply the way people talk about your products or services is valuable to the marketing department. If your interactions start to come from another department or start to drift into technical jargon, it will be useful information and help the marketing department modify and revise their marketing material.
Check back next month for part two of this article on what Marketing can do to help customer service.