Blog posts tagged customer service

2010: The year when customer service meets marketing

I have spent my whole working life in the business world. Before creating Ecademy in 1998, I was sales and marketing director of a computer distributor. I worked for an entrepreneurial managing director and he had an excellent hold on the value of a customer to our relatively small company. We won respect and loyalty in a very competitive market by truly seeing the value of each of our 6,000 customers.

An interesting learning curve for me was that my ‘boss’ also gave me the responsibility for customer service. He felt the outcome and quality of that department were intrinsically linked to sales and marketing - and of course he was right. However, his beliefs and foresight are only just beginning to be vindicated now that consumers and businesses have a loud voice on the Internet.

In 2010, I see many opportunities for businesses to have an impact on the relationship they have with their customers. One area I am fascinated by is the relationship that will have to be formed between the customer service and marketing departments.

In a recent study carried out by CPP Group, they investigated what constitutes bad customer service and how consumers are by no means shy about telling their friends and family about their experiences. In this study they saw a growing trend toward utilising social media to share frustrations rather than telephoning or writing to the ‘offending’ company directly. A shocking set of statistics were:

“…. young adults under the age of 35 could do the most damage to an organisation’s reputation as they are most likely to talk about poor customer service online. Nearly three in ten (28.6%) of 16-24 year olds and two in ten (19.2%) 25-34 year olds would specifically use Facebook, versus only 2.7% of consumers aged 45-54 years old; highlighting the persuasive influence of this single website”.

Source: CPP Group Plc survey – October 09 (CPP White paper on Customer Service)

The use of social media by the under 35’s begs the question ‘What are companies doing to actively seek out the conversations online that can destroy a brand?’

I believe the opportunities and threats that have emerged for companies and brands within the conversations inside social networks will continue to rise at an unprecedented speed. We are only at the cusp of the use of these social networks, with the use of mobile devices only just beginning to integrate social networking into their functionality, and the utilisation of these sites by the mass to vent their frustrations.

In 2010 we will see growing use of mobile interaction with social networks. Through this avenue, consumers will create a much larger demand for high levels of customer service. The ability to spontaneously vent frustration at the exact moment of disappointment will capture irrational, gut-felt emotions in real-time. This will require a rush to get to the ‘disrupted’ customer before their conversations become viral and damaging. Speed of feedback and use of sophisticated search mechanisms to find these conversations will be critical. Microsoft have launched their new search engine, Bing, now indexing Twitter conversations, and Google will follow. Ths is an indication of the desire to seek conversations and be part of them fast.

Customer service will become a game of ‘hunting out the customer’s emotions’, not just waiting for them to call and complain. At this point the customer service team will need to become pro-active rather than reactive. I predict that the customer service team will have as much influence on the marketing and belief in a brand as the marketing teams do.

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Integrity - the secret of good customer service

When the Marketing Donut asked me to make a short contribution to their customer service manifesto for small businesses, I struggled to keep it brief. That’s because I think there are three customer service ingredients that are critical to every business, and they are all connected - leadership, communication and motivation.

The first, leadership, is easy to sum up concisely: it’s about having a vision of where your business is going.

Communication is very strongly linked to leadership, because every piece of communication between your workforce and your customers has to be aligned with your business vision. When I say communication, I don’t just mean what you say and write, but everything you convey to your customers. It’s the impressions and experiences they take away with them.

The third ingredient in good customer service is what I call ‘aligning the motivators’. Let me explain: what I see in most organisations is that they have a great vision of what they want to be and they have lots of communication around that vision. Then they motivate people to do the wrong things.

I’m thinking, for example, about the call centre with a strong customer service promise that gives people bonuses based on the number of calls they make per hour. The result is that if someone gets a difficult call, it’s in their interest to end the call as quickly as possible rather than to deal with the problem properly. So what about the customer service promise? The rewards you offer your team for work well done have to promote your vision, not undermine it.

So we have leadership, communication, motivation – the three ingredients of effective customer service.  Then I thought about integrity. Really, what we’re talking about here is integrity - of vision, of communication and of practice.

You can’t be saying how important customers are to you and then slating them behind their backs. Nor can you say that your people are your greatest asset and then call them your ‘staff’ and not your ‘team’. You certainly can’t sell a product that’s not right for your customer. Whatever you do, do it with integrity and strong customer service will follow. Believe me, the customer soon knows if the integrity isn’t there.

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