Customer Service is a Marketing Medium

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Consumers nowadays are able to quickly determine whether or not your company can meet their high customer service expectations. It only takes a couple of minutes to look up what people are saying about your brand. And if your company’s reputation is lacking, today’s empowered customers will take notice.

The negative repercussions of failing to provide excellent customer service are bigger than ever.

The good news is that if you prioritize it and show customers that you care, you have a lot to gain: loyal customers, better online reputation, new customers due to word of mouth, and ultimately an improved bottom line.

How customer service works as a marketing strategy and its advantages

Customer service is one of the most important customer retention marketing practices, and failing at it results in significant losses:

71% of consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor customer service (Kissmetrics)

Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Yet businesses tend to spend more of their marketing budget on acquiring new customers than they do to improve retention. Customer churn is very costly because customers have to be replaced, and it comes around again as a cost if you decide to sell your business at some point because a buyer will note the high churn and provide a lower valuation as a result.

Additionally, customer service accomplishes the marketing goal of not just keeping customers, but also acquiring new ones. Here are some of the ways customer service can grow your business when used as a marketing strategy:

Word of mouth

Customer service is one of the main mediums through which customers connect with your brand. It is an opportunity to make emotional connections with your customers and make them feel special, cared for, and well treated. When customers are happy and satisfied, they are motivated to tell others about their experience.

Gets your business positive reviews

If you have been in the marketing game for a while, you know that a business’s online reputation and reviews have a significant impact on the results of its marketing efforts. Reviews are a vital piece not only to appeal to customers – but to appeal to Google as well.

A large percentage of reviews are based on the quality of the customer service experienced by customers. 

If you look at businesses across the board, you will notice that many of the 1-star reviews are from angry people that were displeased with customer service.

Helps you get a better understanding of customers

When creating and selling a product or service, it is necessary to develop a deep understanding of your customers.Their needs, common traits, and pain points can be identified more precisely and clearly when talking with customers one on one. 

Can be used to upsell or cross-sell

Customers are more receptive to upselling and cross-selling offers when they are having a good experience or when their current solution is not meeting their needs. .Customer service, customer success and retention teams should be keenly looking for opportunities to upsell and cross-sell as part of their roles. This is a widely adopted strategy by successful companies.Overdoing it and being too salesy can result in a poor customer experience, but when done tactfully, the result is more revenue from each customer = an increase in ARPU and ultimately a valuation. More importantly however, if the root of an issue is solved, the customer is more likely to have a better experience. Perhaps they sign up for a more suitable plan or level of service so they have access to more solutions, a faster service, more features, etc., rather than trying to maximize what might be a bottleneck of resources or features in their current plan. Most customers are willing to pay more for a better experience.

Better support on social media

Is the team in charge of managing your business’s social media account trained for customer service and support?

For many businesses, the answer will be “No.”

The problem here is that consumers use social media as a customer service platform whether you like it or not. More than half of the customers prefer to be helped through social media compared to the phone or email. There is a decent possibility that your team is not trained to properly respond to problems and questions on social media and if your company does non’t treat customer service as a marketing medium, this is a huge lost opportunity! 

As a consequence, your online reputation and customer service — along with all of the benefits that come with them — will not reach their full potential.

Not only is social media faster and preferred by customers, but it i’s also about six times cheaper than call center customer service.

Acquire the material for customer success stories

Customer success stories are an excellent way to show your customers that you achieve what they want  – ie. satisfaction with your product or service.

Customer service and customer success is where your company has the opportunity to meet its customers, and create  success stories.
eBridge is working on some novel and new approaches to address the challenges above so please inquire with us for more details on how we are working with B2B IT service providers to mitigate churn and further monetize your customer base.

Posted December 16, 2019
Categories: Advertising and Marketing General, Guest Blogs
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