Providing a satisfying customer experience is becoming more and more of a priority, especially with all that is happening in the world.
73% of companies that score above-average on customer experience surveys perform better than their competitors. This gap between companies that provide great customer experience and those that do not, is huge.
Unfortunately, customer support teams often function as their own unit and do not communicate the customer expectations to the rest of the company. They are separated from marketers, designers, product managers, and others that are able to alter the customer experience.
Due to the fact that 3 out of 4 customers spend more money with companies that provide superior customer service, it seems beneficial to have an integrated team where support works hand-in-hand with marketers to improve the overall customer experience.
If you are working on bringing your marketing and customer support teams together, with the hope of improving your customer experience, we are here to discuss six ways these two groups can work together to improve the overall success of your business.
Create a Resource Center
Perhaps you already have a resource center on-site, or you have a system in place that acts as a resource center. If you do not, now is the time to get started. Implement something that will allow your customers to get the help that they need, in a timely manner.
At Eternity, we use something called support tickets. A customer can submit a support ticket where they can ask a question, field a complain, or request a solution. It is essentially a place where customers can go when they are struggling with a hard fix issue.
Monitor Social Media Channels
Nowadays, customers are more likely to leave a review or leave their feedback on a social media platform. Whether it is a Facebook or Google review, or a comment on an Instagram post, you need to be monitoring your social media channels and responding to comments and reviews as quickly as possible.
Oftentimes, a separate consumer will purchase a product or service entirely based on feedback from another consumer. Responding to these comments and reviews shows that you care about your customers and you want to provide them with the best possible experience.
There are many platforms that make it easy for you to manage your social media platforms. For example, Hootsuite and Sprout Social are two of the most popular. They pull in all reviews, comments, and post engagement ratings. They also allow you to post directly to your social media platforms through the system itself.
Create Buyer Personas
In order to ensure proper customer experience, you will need to build out buyer personas. Your buyer personas will allow you to understand who your customers are, and what they are looking for in terms of a service or product.
It essentially makes it easy for a company to define their audience.
Oftentimes, the information that is gathered based on the buyer personas is not shared with other departments such as marketing. However, we highly recommend bringing marketers into the conversation in order to strengthen the profiles. Once the profile is created, you can ensure that the buy personas are accessible to everyone. Ultimately, this will lead to a positive customer service experience for each buyer persona.
Market Customer Service
Toot your own horn! If you have a reputation for excellent customer service, there is no reason why you should not be marketing that to the general public. Share customer reviews on social media, and make it known that your buyer personas are happy with the service or product that they pay for.
Customer service is often a differentiating factor for customers. They might be deciding between you and another company, but if your company is well-known for its excellent customer service, they will likely choose you.
Identify Potential Brand Advocates
There are many customers who will have a lot of positive things to say about your brand. Take advantage of that! Ask them if they would like to represent our company, whether that is on social media or through word of mouth.
When a customer has a good experience with a company and shares that with other people, it leads to more sales. In addition, you can pass the potential customer’s contact information to the marketing team, and they can generate leads.
Create Email Templates for Follow Up
If you have a customer that reaches out for your help, be sure to respond and follow up with them. Additionally, if your business and brand want to offer five-star service, the conversation will need to continue once the phone hangs up. Send a follow-up email with a personalized note.
Show that you enjoyed the conversation and look forward to continuing it.
Oftentimes, our team at Eternity will use the follow-up email to not only stay connected with a customer but also to receive feedback in order to improve customer service. Whatever the purpose of your email, we highly recommend that you and your marketing team create an email template that can offer consistent branding and voice.
