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Customer Service Stabbed Marketing in the Office with a Knife

Article Overview: Do you have a clue what is killing your marketing efforts? Whether you are a small business or large corporation, it is likely at least one of these customer service issues is planning the death of your marketing dollars!

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Customer Service Stabbed Marketing in the Office with a Knife

Recently, I had occasion to travel across several states on business and pleasure. Traveling provides a unique opportunity to view the world of customer service from the good, the bad, and the ugly. While noting that the holiday season brings out the worse in both customers and customer service, it was particularly apparent that most companies do not take enough time to think through the rationale of integrating customer service into the marketing department instead, as is traditional in most case, into the sales department. As an even bigger offense, if for some unfathomable reason, customer service is a department unto themselves because the divide between performance and evaluation increases at alarming rates. Without doubt, more marketing dollars are needlessly wasted each year on ineffective customer service than any other marketing endeavor. Clearly, the most preventable cases the murder of marketing dollars is easily fixed by addressing these five customer service issues:

1. Man-Handling: Many times, service representatives react with overzealous pressure on customers. Upon asking to be left alone (clearly) to browse for shoes, I was continually followed and addressed by a sales person. When I requested, pointedly, that the sales lady go away, she did only to be replaced by another salesperson from the same charm school. As a result, my shopping experience was ruined and I left the store.

2. Cow-Towing: For some service reps, good customer service is equated to bowing and scraping before the buyers. The buyer feels horrible that the company or the service individual is fawning over them like an entourage following the diva of the week around the store. With a strange mixture of discomfort and annoyance, the customer exits the store as quickly as possible.

3. Passive-Aggressive: Interestingly enough, in the past few weeks, I have encountered this behavior in several professional settings. When asking for a call number in the library, the Librarian literally snatched the paper from my hand to go get the book from me with a curt, "that is my job!" As I stood in shock staring at her back, it seemed an odd sense of customer service that resounded of policy filtration. In another case, I was seriously asked, "What do you want?" Looking around a large, brand name bookstore, I humorously ordered, "a double cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate shake." In both instances, marketing dollars are wasted as customer service is isolated from the rest of the company structure. NOTE TO CUSTOMER SERVICE WORLD: The customer does not care if YOU are having a bad day, so that excuse does not fly for me.

4. Know-Nothing: In contrast, customer service employees that know nothing about the product or services offered by a company are the worst waste of marketing money. When customers fill the store seeking details about services or directions to products, a customer service representative should at least have general knowledge. If the product or service base is so large that no one could have a strong working knowledge, the product specialist should be assigned to aid the customer. I watched as a bookstore employee advised a beginning PhotoShop7 (yes, I know....groan from the audience....PhotoShop7!) to buy the PhotoShopCS3 Bible because it was about the same thing. Needless to say, I stepped in to advise her to look online for a copy for a Dummies or 24-Hour book appropriate to her version of Photoshop. "What's the difference?" she asked me politely. "About $75, years of needed Photoshop experience, and the frustration of trying to follow a book that does not represent your software," I replied with encouragement.

5. Techno-Interruptus: Shopping for a new cell phone urged me to add one more criminal act of marketing murder to the sphere of customer service. Although I do admit that technology is a wonderful thing for business, it might well be the worst thing ever created for customer service. Encountering service reps texting or talking about a party on their cell gives the worst impression of a company and completely sends me toward the door. If that customer service rep adds a deep resounding huff of "you are bother me" to the mix, then I might ban the store from coast to coast from my shopping experience.

In most cases, customer service initiatives can enrich the return on investment for every marketing dollar spent by a company. Marketing expenditures can lead to increased sales and heightened positive brand awareness with the help of informed customer service force as part of the marketing team.

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Home > Marketing > Diana Bourgeois > Customer Service Stabbed Marketing in the Office with a Knife

Article Tags: business, customer service, marketing, ROI, sales, technology

About the Author: Diana Bourgeois
RSS for Diana's articles - Visit Diana's website

With over 7 years in the field of social media, internet marketing, and blogging, I never get tired of teaching and learning about new ways to help small business owners market their businesses. After spending years in the corporate structure, I became fascinated with the ï¿½Ah Haï¿½ moment that happens with small to medium sized businesses when they hit the homerun of growing their businesses beyond their wildest dreams. In many cases, social media and marketing is about working smarter, not harder to establish relationships and share your world with others. From LinkedIn to Twitter too all of the media in between, you will find me giving marketing advice to small business owners, especially women based businesses, on the way to create success through marketing! When you are ready to grow your business and find success through your marketing, join me at http://visitor.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?p=oi&m=1102267844221 to receive your free monthly newsletter.

Check out our new premier, women-only networking group Networking in High Heels at www.networkinginhighheels.com.

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