Elevate Your Corporate Customer Service with These Marketing Strategies

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While some owners of large businesses may believe their marketing and customer service plans and goals are separate entities, they actually should be connected and have a mutually beneficial relationship.

According to Business.com, since you rely on specific marketing strategies to acquire new customers and boost your revenue, it’s only logical that these principles complement your customer service efforts in order to strengthen the relationships you’ve forged with your customers.

The following marketing strategies can help any large businesses and enterprises elevate their customer service efforts, as well as their profit margins.

What Makes Incredible Customer Service?

Before you begin to create and design a marketing strategy, you first need to outline what makes incredible customer service, and what it means for you as a company. For example, there are a number of aspects which will apply to every industry while others may be niche-specific.

Essentially, excellent customer service is one which encompasses all aspects of the customer’s journey; from the moment they enter your store (whether physical or online) to the follow-up after they’ve purchased an item or service. You have to be able to greet every customer in a warm, welcoming way, so they feel valued and special from the moment they enter. Ensure every employee is clued up on what you expect from their customer service skills; it’s often much more than greeting someone with a smile and saying ‘hope you have a nice day’!

Luckily, there are a variety of rules to follow to enable everyone in your company to provide excellent customer service. They include:

• Being Available – In the digital age especially, a customer expects to be able to contact your business at any time, on any day. Long gone are the days of working primarily set hours, and only being able to visit you in-store. Create a website which clearly features ways to get in contact with you and your staff, but go one step further. Make sure you answer your phone. Phone calls are still an integral way for customers to contact businesses, and if you ignore your phone, your customers will go elsewhere. If you are busy, make sure there’s a team member on hand who can deal with telephone inquiries and point people in the right direction.
• Always deal with complaints – Unfortunately, no business is perfect. While you may think you have offered astounding service, your customer may disagree. If they complain about any aspect of their experience with your company, you need to be able to respond appropriately and fairly. This doesn’t mean offering groveling apologies instantly. Rather, try to come to an understanding with your customer to ensure that they are happy with your service and response, but also to ensure this doesn’t happen again. While you can’t expect to get every order 100% correct, you must be able to learn from your mistakes, so they don’t happen in the future.
• Never make promises you can’t keep – This is an obvious point, but it’s a crucial one regardless. As a business, if you promise a service or item, you must deliver it. By failing to keep to what you promise you can offer, you not only lose the potential profit, but you also lose the respect and trust a customer has in you. Trust and respect are difficult to build between business and consumer. It can take weeks or even longer to develop a bond, but it can take mere seconds to break it. Never underestimate the power of trust. Without it, why would a consumer return to you?
• Always listen – If a customer tells you something doesn’t work, listen to them. It’s important not to assume you know better, merely because you’re the owner of the business. Instead, listen to the consumers and those using your products and services. After all, they are the best judges, and they know what is right about something, and what is wrong. Listen to their recommendations and the ways you can change and improve what you do. To ensure you do listen, why not undergo survey’s with past customers and clients, and ask for feedback after a sales pitch or a meeting. By doing so, you will get honest answers about what you need to change. However, it’s a wise idea to offer something in return for completing the survey. Discounts and rewards are a common and useful way to both entice and reward.
• Train your staff – How can you expect your staff to deliver perfect customer service if you don’t train them on it? Undertake training regularly to update your team members on the best way to deal with complaints, feedback, making sure every customer feels valued, and so on.

With the above points in mind, what are the best marketing strategies to implement in your business?

Make Outstanding Customer Service as Important as Your Product Selection

Yes, it’s important to sell a wide selection of products and services at reasonable prices. But as Zappos.com has discovered firsthand, delivering a solid and dependable customer experience is an indispensable part of their marketing plan. Ever since Zappos opened for business nearly two decades ago, the company has striven to be “powered by service” and has a team of customer service reps who have one goal in mind: to “wow” each customer.

When consumers head to Zappos.com to search for a new pair of shoes, each web page includes easy-to-find contact information. If you call in with a question, the friendly customer service reps are 100 percent committed to helping you get the information you need. All this is part of Zappos’ marketing plan, and the result has been a steadily growing company that shows no signs of stopping.

Look to the Cloud for a Modern Customer Service Experience

Another marketing strategy that ties in nicely with a winning customer service approach is to invest in a cloud contact center. If you have a heavy volume of calls and/or want to expand the hours of your customer care options, then investing in a cloud call center will allow you to achieve that goal.

For instance, cloud contact centers offer a modern customer service platform for enterprises, as well as feature personalized customer service tools. So rather than extend the hours of your already hard-working customer service team, implement a cloud call center to assist your customers 24/7 on a variety of channels, including voice, text, mobile web, live chat, and social messengers.

Discover What Your Customers Want and Give it to Them

Another great way to meld marketing and customer service is to work hard at finding out what your valued customers desire most — and then help make it a reality. For instance, your marketing department can send follow-up emails, asking your customers what they liked and didn’t like about the product and/or their experience with your company. Indeed, that simple step can go a long way in fostering customer loyalty.

You can also poll your customers to see what they value most. For instance, are low prices the most important factor in their decision-making process? Maybe it boils down to free shipping. Once you have a solid understanding of what your customers want, strive to offer it to them again and again without any excuses or issues.

And as your marketing department employees reach out to customers, they can also inquire if perks like a sneak peek at upcoming products or special sales or discounts would entice them to shop with you. Customers will likely appreciate the fact you care about them and their preferences, which can help convert them into lifelong fans of your company.

Marketing Plus Customer Service Equals Success

As you continue to grow your company, remember that no matter what product or service you market, you’re ultimately selling customer service. Thus, when you include customer care as part of your marketing plan, it will no doubt improve your bottom line.

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