Why Customer Service is an Important Part of Marketing
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Content marketing, ads, social media marketing are all great marketing tools for any business, but without excellent customer service they can mean next to nothing to your current and future customers.
Why excellent Customer Service is crucial to your Marketing strategy
Customer Service can be a strong competitive advantage
It’s not at all uncommon for more than 2 businesses to have the same target market, same products or services, even the same stakeholders. Giving this, how do you stand out? What can help you gain more market share?
That’s right — exceptional customer service can be your competitive advantage. And it’s not hard at all, since only a small percentage of companies really invest in customer satisfaction via customer service. You’ll be part of a small niche that values in actions, not in empty words, their customers.
Customer Retention is easier and cheaper than Customer Acquisition
In other words, by providing fast and helpful Customer Service, clients will stay with you instead of going to your competitors. Once you can satisfy your customers when they need help, you won’t have to do much else to market them. Existing customers or those in the last stages of a customer’s journey are more likely to make a purchase, compared to those people who just heard of you.
Word of mouth is still king
Building on the previous point, what do you want people to hear about you? How do you want people to feel when they hear your name? Your product or service rarely will be that good to generate organic word of mouth, but human interaction or experiences about it definitely will. How the customer service team is behaving with your customers needs is also a great reflection of how the company is doing internally, so keep in mind to keep your employees happy. What’s more, if you give your current customers a reason to stay (and yes, that could be exceptional customer service), you might not even have to invest that much in other marketing tools as well.
Buying is still an emotional action
You have access to the raw needs, wants, concerns and thoughts of your customers each time they are in contact with your customer service team. Customer Service employees have the real buyer persona, right in front of them or right in their ear. Based on these insights, you can prepare both your products/services and your employees. Excellent customer service means to relate to your clients pain points and have the competencies to serve them. Every sale is an emotional decision, whether you like it or not, so make your customer service emotional, backed-up by strong technical knowledge.
One last thought: Make Customer Service part of your Marketing Strategy so you can decrease costs and increase sales at the same time.
