Marketing and customer service are two very important aspects of customer service. However, a lot of people don’t realize that it is possible for them to work together as well. This is especially true because of the fact that customer service app such as the one offered by Kayako has made customer support so much easier, allowing CSRs to incorporate marketing into their jobs as well. Here are some ways in which customer service and marketing can work together.
#1 Customer Support Through Social Media
Social media is the new playground for a lot of different areas of running a business. Two of the most important things that can be done through social media are customer support and marketing. This means that both of these things can be done together. A single Twitter account can be the place where new products are launched and advertised, and it can also be the place where customers approach you with problems and complaints.
#2 Better Ideas For Content
Because of the fact that you have an entire team of people talking to customers and getting their experiences, content generation becomes a great deal easier than it would have been otherwise. This is especially true when you consider that the content is made for the customers in the first place, so getting an idea of the problems that the products and services solve will make the content creation process smoother and a lot more efficient. Content creation is one of the most important areas of the marketing processes, so the fact that customer support helps in this area makes it pretty clear that the two fields have a lot in common.
#3 Understand Customer Expectations
Marketing is basically a way to give customers the impression that the products and services they are going for are what they need in their day to day lives. Hence, when a customer support representative talks to a customer and understands what they are expecting from the products that they have received, they can then relay this information to the marketing department who can easily use it in the various campaigns that they are thinking of implementing. The important thing to remember here is that you are getting real customer expectations, not guesses based on analysis.
#4 Manage Customer Needs
While a marketing department is supposed to position products and services according to customer expectations, the job of the customer support department is to make sure that customers are getting what they need. Hence, if there is a mistake in the marketing department and a customer ended up thinking that a particular product did something that it does not, in fact, do, the customer support department is always there to pick up the slack and make sure that the problem does not end up getting any bigger than it already is.
#5 Better User Experiences Through Unified Goals
One of the biggest problems that a lot of companies have to face is the fact that their various departments often end up working against one another. Hence, having customer service and marketing departments working alongside one another is something that can lead to a lot of benefits. They will be unified in their pursuit of a shared goal. This means that anything that each department does is going to end up benefiting both departments. Over time you will notice that this doubles the overall efficiency of work being done at your company, which is an essential part of optimizing your profit margins.
#6 Easier to Reward Customers
If marketing and customer service are working together, rewarding customers can become a breeze. The marketing department can offer points, discounts or any other goodies to customers and then use the customer support department to implement this marketing scheme or tactic. Customer support can also be used to figure out who is getting the rewards in the first place, as it is a platform that would allow you to gain access to the largest base of customers that you could possibly find. This is one of the most important facets of how customer service and marketing can end up working together.
#7 Extra Platform to Market On
Whenever your customers phone in with queries, you could have your customer support department there waiting to market to them. While it is important not to saturate your customers with marketing as soon as they call, having an extra platform definitely does not hurt. In fact, it can be used to introduce new and better products and services, especially if you are offering them for free to irate customers. This can help solve a lot of problems all at once, and so is an incredibly efficient way of doing things in terms of the amount of time it will take to solve a problem.
