January 16, 2023
In simple terms, Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. It is an act to assist customers in making cost-effective and correct use of a product or service that includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product without damaging it.
Customer service plays a major role in business. It’s the leading indicator for measuring customer loyalty. Identify your unhappy customers, reduce the churn, and increase revenue. It’s also a key point of differentiation which helps to attract fresh customers in a competitive business environment.
In today’s digital age and highly competitive business environment, customer service is a practice that should be among the top strategies for a company to develop its business. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a C-suite leader, a product quality manager, or front-line customer associate; if you don’t cultivate a customer-first mindset, you’re leaving your organization far behind in the competition where others are treating their customers next to god.
“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter. VP of British Airways.
Businesses invest a good amount in marketing and advertising efforts to bring consumers through doors, but retaining these customers is as important as bringing them through. customer services play a vital role here. The important part of customer service is in keeping the customers once you bring them in. Don’t forget, it costs significantly more to attract new customers than it does to take care of the ones you already have.
So after a short introduction to what and how important is customer service, let’s discuss a few points that mark the importance of customer services in marketing.
1. It helps to stand out in the competition
In today’s competitive marketplace, the hardest job for a marketer is differentiating their business from the competition. In this fierce competition to create a separate identity for a business, consumers turn to the ones that give the most value for the price through their ultimate experience with you.
Customers value your service more than the pricing of your product or service. If you succeed to show to your customers that their needs are valued, they will be willing to pay more and also focus on your products rather than those other available in the market.
2. It helps to know customers better
The relation with a customer does not end once he buys a product or service from you. It starts from there. If you deploy a customer service team they will spend the most time with your customers that will help them to know the customer’s choices and requirements w.r.t the product or services better.
This information that the customer handling team has gained can be used to understand and develop buyer personas for the current and future customers as well. As soon as you have a clear representation of your ideal customers, you’ll see how your business and marketing efforts can become more fruitful.
3. Aligning Customer Service and Marketing Department for best results
Earlier, once the marketing team brought in a new customer, they handed them off to support and begin focusing on new leads. Whatever happened with the customer after the handoff – whether good or bad, was none of their concern. This lack of alignment between both departments caused friction in terms of the customer’s expectations, leading to frustration and disappointment among them.
But now there is a need that marketing and customer service teams work together to bridge this gap and render the best customer experience. Positive customer experience will improve customers’ likelihood to return to you and increase the probability they’ll spend more on their next purchase.
4. It helps craft enticing marketing campaigns
The customer service team is the one that is closest to your customers and they have a deep knowledge of how people are using your products and services. You can clearly find and identify the loopholes in your marketing strategies and discover new tactics to influence the audience w.r.t the knowledge gained by your customer service team.
Different customers use your product or service differently. This crucial information of how your customers are using your products is by default gained by the customer service team. This information can help you align your campaigns and promotions with the best perception of your customers.
5. Builds Brand Awareness
Marketing and advertising always aim to attract customers and build brand awareness. Millions of dollars are being spent every year from the marketing budget on implementing brand awareness campaigns.
Good customer services play a very vital role in building awareness of your brand. Word of mouth from past experience is the most powerful ally you have on your side. What your customers say to others can make or break your business. When you provide the best in customer service, people will talk about you. They will remember your brand and refer to their colleagues who are in need of a product or services that your business makes.
6. Increases the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)
Every business aims to acquire customers for the lifetime or a long period of time. In order to achieve this desire, businesses should focus on satisfying customers to the best level. Satisfaction plays a major role in determining how much revenue a customer contributes towards your business.
Increased CLV leads to an increase in return on investment (ROI) and it is one of the best tactics that can be used to promote or market your product or service to your audience.
7. Minimizes Negative Publicity
It is very important for a business to be aware of their unhappy customers. Unhappy customers are the flaws from where negativity spreads for your business and remember that negative feedback or image spreads far quicker.
Customer service helps to understand the loopholes in the product or services and also examines the issues that are arising for customers to use the product hustle free. This lessens the chances of customers getting frustrated and disappointed and developing a negative image for the brand or business.
It helps to measure customer satisfaction levels continuously. Tracking changes in satisfaction levels would help you to identify whether customers are really happy with the product or service and this data can be used to market your product or services.
8. Helps Develop Goodwill among Society
Building up some extra goodwill is always important for any business or brand. Brand image is a very important element to a company because it not only helps you attract customers but also attract a new pool of talent for your company and motivates them to embrace your company’s values.
When a brand focuses on customer service and support, it has the greatest growth potential for a longer period of time. Thus reducing the marketing and advertising cost for an organization.
To wrap up…
The primary goal of an organization’s customer service team should always be to solve the current customer’s complaints/queries and retain them by keeping them always happy. Also, providing excellent customer service isn’t just a matter of answering customers’ questions and solving their problems. It’s also not about just being courteous to your customers – it’s a vital element of business operations and marketing strategy that can impact your bottom line and affect how your company is viewed in the public eye.
Remember…
“Satisfied customer is the best source of advertisement.”
Thank you.
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