{"id":21120,"date":"2021-09-20T05:04:04","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T04:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/?p=21120"},"modified":"2023-01-16T11:41:11","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T11:41:11","slug":"the-benefits-of-seeing-customer-support-as-part-of-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/the-benefits-of-seeing-customer-support-as-part-of-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"The benefits of seeing Customer Support as part of marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Customer Support is most often seen as a troubleshooting team. <\/span>Can\u2019t figure software setup? Call Customer Support. Need a refund? Shoot an email to customer care. Site down? Order lost? Nothing. Works. At all!\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Call the support guys.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: Adobe Stock<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Less often, Customer Support gets seen as a simplified version of Sales. <\/span>What\u2019s your pricing? What exactly do I get with this subscription plan? Can I get a discount if I buy in bulk? How do you compare to your competitors?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The approach taken by most companies when training their customer support representatives is quite similar: Train them to troubleshoot, explain product pricing and benefits, give them a clear algorithm for offering discounts, and make sure they do all of it quickly and with a broad smile.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fewer businesses see Customer Support as part of their marketing strategy, which is driven by the need to create a better <\/span>customer experience<\/span><\/a> (one of the biggest business drivers in many industries as of the last few years). However, this is happening significantly less often.<\/span><\/p>\n

The scarcity of marketing-driven Customer Care teams finds its reflection in how teams see customer experience<\/a> or CX. <\/span>Oracle\u2019s study<\/span><\/a> demonstrated that Service departments (including customer service) are the most sceptical about fostering customer experience excellence, while marketing teams are the most optimistic ones and often find themselves in the visionary category.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: <\/span><\/i>Global CX Insights Report by Oracle<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

Seeing your Customer Service as part of marketing and having a close collaboration between Customer Service and other marketing teams helps create a more robust marketing strategy that leverages the great customer experience of your existing clients to acquire new ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a closer look at the benefits of seeing your Customer Care team as part of your company\u2019s marketing, and discuss the areas of your business where Customer Support can make a difference.<\/span><\/p>\n

Long term influence on commercial business metrics<\/span><\/h2>\n

Traditionally Customer Support teams measure non-commercial things like CSAT, <\/span>customer effort score<\/span><\/a>, response time, resolution time, and quite often NPS. The teams seen as part of marketing will co-own the most vital commercial metrics such as retention, lifetime value, and churn, and will significantly impact revenue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unique customer insights for product marketing<\/span><\/h2>\n

When your Customer Support team is part of marketing, you can trust them to connect to clients that fit a specific profile, and help with research to improve product marketing data.<\/span><\/p>\n

Customer Service can also provide the best insights into how customers perceive your product, which wording they use to describe it, and which pain points it solves for them. This data gets used by product marketing teams to position and package products for target audiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Use Customer Support to listen to your customers and find out how they describe your products\/features, as well as the way your clients benefit from your product(s) or service(s). These customer insights will get translated into the right wording in your marketing communication (your website, email marketing, social media posts, etc.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Validating ideas for the product and for marketing\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Not everything can be validated with quantitative data. A\/B tests are expensive, often time-consuming, and often are just not possible for smaller businesses with less traffic. With little traffic, it would take months to reach statistically significant results and years to repeatedly fail, iterate, and achieve the scale of growth you\u2019re looking for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, growth-oriented businesses validate the majority of ideas with qualitative data. This is where Customer Support helps. It\u2019s a perfect channel to validate new features and products at the ideation and design stage, and assess the potential impact of marketing initiatives that require a lot of effort to build.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Customer reviews and testimonials for your site<\/span><\/h2>\n

Testimonials are an endorsement from your customers, adding the benefit of social proof to your business. When other customers see who else is using your products or services\u2014and loving them\u2014they\u2019ll want to too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many companies include testimonials on their website because they convey credibility and trust as soon as customers land on their page. You can feature testimonials throughout your whole website, including on product pages. Some businesses even choose to create a dedicated customer testimonials page.<\/span><\/p>\n

Customer service is a great channel to spot happy customers and <\/span>ask them for a testimonial<\/span><\/a> at the right moment, such as asking while wrapping up conversations in a chat box or in a follow up email after an interaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

More reviews on 3rd-party platforms and review sites<\/span><\/h2>\n

Reviews are one of the critical factors in the buying process. Year after year studies demonstrate that online reviews influence consumers\u2019 purchasing decisions and that online reviews are getting the amount of trust close to that generated by personal recommendations.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source: <\/span><\/i>BrightLocal<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

Third-party review sites are an essential marketing tool for many businesses. It has become a standard for many industries to have a presence on these sites. As third-party review sites often appear in the top search engine results for your brand keywords, it\u2019s important to keep the review scores high.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Which sites you\u2019ll focus on will depend on your industry and on the specifics of your product. Popular sites include:<\/span><\/p>\n