In the high-touch, customer experience-driven world we increasingly live in, excellent post-sale-contacts are important. That's customer service to normal folks. As I pointed out in a recent post on Marketers Are From Mars, Customers Are From Venus, customers expect excellent customer service, indeed, they believe they have already paid for it when buy a product. And if the strongest repurchase intentions are developed during the usage of a product, it stands to reason that rotten customer service is all the reason most customers need to defect. Plenty of research bears out this somewhat obvious conclusion.

In many ways, customer service is the new marketing, particularly with experience-rich products. A recent conference held in San Francisco in February explored this topic further. One of the most interesting things to come out of the conference was a Company-Customer Pact. The pact sets out five responsibilities that both companies and customers share. For example, the first responsibility for companies reads: "Be human. Use a respectful, conversational voice, avoid scripts and never use corporate doublespeak". The same responsibility for customers reads: "Be understanding. Show the respect and kindness to company reps as you would like shown to you". Over 150 people have already signed-up to the pact, although I didn't spot any names from big corporations when I glanced through it.

And there's the problem. Pacts like the one created by the conference are useless unless big corporations recognise that customer service is the new marketing. Recent events suggest that they do not. For example, Verizon are in the news this week because call centre staff in Florida are striking about customer-unfriendly processes. That's right customer service staff are demonstrating on behalf of customers! You can understand their frustration. It is a classical example of the boundary spanning problem, whereby front-line staff have to span the boundary between what management wants (lower costs and more sales through service) and what customers want (better service and help when they need it). Life can be pretty tough for front-line staff who have to play piggy in the middle in what is essentially a zero-sum game.

What do you think? Is customer service the new marketing? Or is it all just hot air while corporations view customer service as an unnecessary cost?

Post a comment and get the conversation going.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

Further research:

Marketers Are From Mars, Customers Are From Venus blog
http://www.customerthink.com/blog/marketers_from_mars_customers_from_ven...

Customer Service is the New Marketing conference
http://csitnm.com/

The Company-Customer Pact
http://ccpact.pbwiki.com/

Verizon Staff Demonstrate on Behalf of Customers
http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=c268e2db-4...