The marketing team drives customers to the business, whether that be an online shop or a brick and mortar store. They then help customers make their way through the buyer’s journey that ultimately leads to them becoming a customer.
In other words, marketing done well turns potential customers into paying customers.
Customer support team’s job is to keep those customers happy and coming back for more. Now more than ever, customer service is a make or break piece in how people perceive a brand and plays a large role in a customer’s brand experience.
Get where I’m going with this? Marketing creates stellar brand awareness and ushers your customers in with open arms and customer support works their charm to keep them around.
Let’s take a closer look at this, shall we? Here are 4 ways both your customer service and marketing team can work together to create a well-rounded brand experience for customers.
Understand customers on a deeper level
Marketing 101 taught us that marketing to every and anyone is a big no-no. Instead, understanding the core person or group of people who actually want to hear and buy from you is a much smarter plan.
Figuring out who those people are will not only make life so much easier when creating marketing and branding materials but when communicating one on one with customers as well.
Customer support team members are usually the ones getting to know customers on a more personal level. It could be highly beneficial for those on the marketing team to utilize that knowledge. This could include sitting in on customer calls, interviewing customer support team members or sitting in on their team meetings.
Open the door to testimonials and case studies
According to Bigcommerce, 92% of consumers read online reviews and testimonials when considering a purchase, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 72% of them say positive reviews and testimonials make them trust a business more. As you can see, testimonials and reviews matter – a lot.
Often we associate customer support reps with solely handling disgruntled complaints and helping customers with any questions they may have. But, there’s a strong chance that they’re also hearing some great things about your company from customers.
Creating customer centric content
It’s safe to assume where there’s a marketing team, there’s a marketing strategy that includes regular and consistent content creation.
Earlier I mentioned how customer service and marketing could work together to create a deeper understand of who your company’s target customers are. They can also work together to put together a solid editorial calendar for those customers.
By being in constant contact with customers, customer support reps are sitting on a treasure mound of great content ideas.
The insight customer support reps have can help create much needed content that directly addresses customer problems and pains.
Customer service via social media
In many companies, especially smaller ones, the marketing team is still the one who handles the social media accounts. With increasingly more vocal customers this can cause problems if customer service and marketing aren’t on the same page. Especially if the marketing team is treating social media as a one and done task.
Social media customer service is becoming widespread. It’s crucial for your social media manager (SMM) or management team receive the same level of training as customer support.
Keep everyone in the loop
It may seem like customer service and marketing are completely different but there many similar goals for both teams. One of which is to create amazing customer experiences while and turning customers into loyal fans.
Regardless of what team someone’s on, keeping everyone in the loop makes all the difference. Especially, in terms of customer experience and branding.
If a customer experiences one type of interaction with the marketing team and a totally different one with the customer support team, it’s going to raise some suspicion.
All the more reason to combine forces and create an incredible experience all around.
