Marketers and customer experience professionals need to huddle together to receive , analyze , report and review customer feedback trends . Feedback presents itself from customers in all shapes including : complaints from which customer expectations may be gleaned ; suggestions on what could be altered or tweaked in a product or service to have it enhance satisfaction ; or even aspects of their experience with the brand that provide satisfaction , that will enable the organization focus on keeping those in place .
Other valuable customer feedback of keen interest to marketers would emanate from loyal customer interactions . When customers feel emotionally connected to brands they naturally observe competing brands and willingly share the shortcomings experienced to ensure their ‘ friends ’ do not also fall short , or provide useful information about elements of the competing brand ’ s offerings that their brand of choice needs to look out for to benchmark .
Market intelligence is useful for positioning and to enhance value addition for continued growth . Continuous customer feedback provides market information that would otherwise have been obtained from scheduled surveys and competitor analysis gathering .
By customers sharing feedback to the extent that they supply information on price , and their experience of it with a view to gauging the value for money index , they provide important decision making information . There is undisputed value in the customer service and marketing teams exploiting the immense potential that customer feedback holds .
It is every marketers dream to get a hold of excellent customer testimonials that tout the brand ’ s horn and provide an endorsement that carries much more weight than any marketing pitch ever would . Customers with excellent experiences of a product or service are highly inclined to tell others about it .
‘‘ When marketing and customer service teams work together , internal and external communication stems from a central point and enhances the all-round customer experience . When emanating from a common spot , enquiries coming in from marketing efforts will be effectively handled by the service team that were part of the process to develop the campaign .’’
Rave reviews go a long way to promote the marketing cause . Happy customers will not hesitate to have their endorsement go public and in this digital era , go viral as well . When marketers introduce themselves to customers for feedback , it is unlikely that the customer would volunteer information as marketers are very often thought of as wanting to ‘ sell ’ or ‘ market ’ something .
When conducting a voice of the customer exercise , however , a customer experience practitioner is more likely to elicit info on what makes a customer happy and use the same warm conversation , to request to use their recommendation for marketing purposes .
Happy customers are of value to marketers to promote their marketing efforts as well as to customer service personnel , especially in a service failure situation , where the need for external support is critical from a PR and communication angle . The same shared resource ‘ the happy customer ’ needs to be at the centre of both departments ’ strategies .
With all the joint needs , activities , resources , points of convergence and desired outcomes , it makes for corporate sense to have these two departments operate as one .
When marketing and customer service teams work together , internal and external communication stems from a central point and enhances the all-round customer experience . When emanating from a common spot , enquiries coming in from marketing efforts will be effectively handled by the service team that were part of the process to develop the campaign .
In the same vein , emerging customer service issues will be seamlessly handled by the online marketing teams , who will have awareness of the crisis at hand and manage their communications to align with customer enquiries and complaints .
The case for unification of the two departments is solid from an operational , service and financial perspective .
Marketing budgets and Customer experience budgets that are created together will have alignment and joint budget implementation goals . That people don ’ t buy price but buy value is a facet of both teams .
A challenge should be thrown out to all business leaders to go back to the drawing board and re-create
Carolyne Gathuru is the founder and director of strategy at LifeSkills Consulting . She has several years of experience in customer experience strategy development and training . You can commune with her on this or related issues via mail at : CGathuru @ life-skills . co . ke .