While each department serves different purposes within your business, digital marketing and customer service can help each other in a variety of ways.
Think of it this way. Digital marketing attracts potential customers, whereas customer service is essential for engagement, retention, and to reward customers. Each process can inform the other: customer service can help develop effective digital marketing strategies, while marketing can support customer service in their role to increase brand loyalty.
In short, digital marketing is the start of your customer relationship, while customer service links your customers to your team. Both departments can benefit from putting customers at the center of their processes. From the customer’s point of view, each point of interaction with your business, whether through marketing or customer service, is seen as one entity.
If your marketing and customer service strategies have customer success as their end goals, you can create a sales journey that delights customers from beginning to end.
Here are a few ways to combine your digital marketing and customer service efforts.
Content Creation
Your customer service team is the first line of communication for current and prospective customers. For this reason, your customer service agents have unique insight into your customers’ pain points and preferences. This data is invaluable to the marketing team, which can use this information to create meaningful and engaging content for users.
Content creation is an ideal medium for both marketing and customer service teams to interact with your consumer base. For example, social media platforms can dually support visual marketing campaigns and serve as communication channels for your brand. Marketers can also get a pulse of customer needs by including feedback requests, such as interactive poll questions, in social media posts.
Customer service and marketing should coordinate their social media approach so that customers interact with your business in a cohesive manner.
Marketing and customer service can take note of patterns in customer interactions, including products or services that generate the most service requests. Marketing can use this data to craft helpful campaigns that answer the most common questions.
Brand Messaging
Consistent brand messaging enables your brand to build trust amongst your clients.
Marketers craft a complete brand identity that reflects your company’s values, target demographic, and mission. The customer service team must conduct its work in alignment with the brand voice. Their work also bolsters your business’ credibility and reputation.
For this reason, both marketing and customer service should follow the same social strategy. Customer interactions should be consistent across promotions, posts, and service responses. While it is advisable for customer service agents to adapt their responses based on the content of the customer’s feedback, marketing should help agents develop a standardized tone that reflects your company’s brand identity.
Personalized Customer Experience
Customers expect more than just outstanding service and good products. Today’s consumers also demand personalized experiences that take their purchase history into consideration. Brands that personalize customer interactions from the very beginning of the journey are better at securing first-time and repeat sales.
To achieve this, your marketing and customer service teams must go above and beyond for your customers. Consider the type of experience you want your target clients to have from their first interaction with your brand.
Both your marketing and customer service teams can tailor their messaging to match each customer’s unique needs. Your teams can do this by collecting and analyzing customer data and turning it into actionable insights.
For example, some eCommerce businesses send out automated emails reminding customers to complete their checkout and offer special discounts on items in their cart.
Customer service teams can provide several types of communication styles to suit your clients’ preferences. For example, automated messaging can support clients who prefer short and direct communications, while phone lines or chat boxes can serve customers who prefer more in-depth conversations.
Loyalty Programs
Branded loyalty programs are one of the most effective ways to increase customer satisfaction. The best customer loyalty programs go beyond coupons. Marketing and customer service teams work together to compile customers’ purchase histories and data to create personalized reward programs that appeal to how each customer interacts with your brand.
Some businesses even use customer service as a form of recognition. For example, you can create a special customer service team only for clients who generate a certain amount of sales. The marketing team can incorporate this perk into their campaigns targeting high-value customers.
