7 Reasons to Integrate Your Marketing and Customer Service Teams

Consumers have always had opinions on the products and services they buy (and the service they receive), but the growth of social media has made voicing these opinions easy to do and therefore more visible than ever.  As a direct result, how your customer services handle these opinions is now in the spotlight. As marketing operates in the same channels, bad customer experiences can have a seriously detrimental effect on your marketing activities. The result is that marketing and customer services can no longer operate in isolation and here are 7 reasons why collaboration between the two departments is essential.

1. Improving Customer Service on Social MediaYour social media manager is unlikely to be the most qualified person to handle customer service on social media channels. To improve effectiveness, bringing members of your customer service team into the equation means they can deploy their expertise and participate in the handling of enquiries or complaints.
2. Creating Engaging ContentYour customer service team understand the needs, wants and problems of your customers. As such they are a source of valuable and engaging content. Using their experience in the creation of content benefits your marketers’ efforts with information that contains true insight.
3. Understanding Purchasing BehaviourThe basis of effective marketing campaigns is understanding your customers. As the personnel on the front line, your customer service team is likely to be the most valuable resource at your disposal in discovering the triggers and reasons that drive your customers purchasing decisions.
4. Managing Customer Expectations The offers made during marketing campaigns unfortunately may not always deliver what they promise. In such instances the customer service team are ideally placed to help marketers understand which elements were misleading and how campaigns can be improved in the future.
5. Unifying Your Messaging and GoalsFor many customers the first port of call with a question about a campaign goes through the customer service team. As a result it is imperative that the team know which marketing activities are being carried out, so they are adequately equipped to handle any issues or questions. Briefing sessions or documents are a painless way to implement this unified approach.
6. Identifying and Promoting Customer SuccessesCustomer services don’t just handle negativity and equally, positive experiences feature. Having your customer service team pass these positive customer experiences onto marketing is a fantastic source of marketing collateral. The feedback can be used in case studies and testimonials for PR or customer-centric marketing campaigns.
7. Realising the True Worth of Your OfferingMarketers base much of their work on the supposed benefits of a product or service. But these benefits, often developed internally may not actually align with the real world advantages of your offering which can be sourced from customer services, helping to make marketing more effective.

The increasingly joined up world in which marketing, sales and customer services operate has made these departments indivisible. Inter-departmental communication, combined with collaboratively developing strategies and plans is the best way to achieve successful campaigns that are perfectly aligned with the needs of your customers and the objectives of your business.