Setting up a business has become quite easy in today’s digital era. You just need to have a product or a service and a website designed for your business. And you’re ready!
What still remains a challenge is to profitably run that business for a long-term.
This is where the two pillars of business come in – Marketing and Customer Service. Think about it, who will buy from you if they don’t even know that your business exists? And Which customer will come to you again if you gave them horrible customer service the first time? Hence, these two pillars are crucial for any type of business.
In this blog, we will be discussing how a collaboration of marketing and customer service contributes to boosting sales of a business, ways of collaboration, types of collaboration, etc.
Marketing and Customer Service
Collaboration of Marketing and Customer service’s team can create a loop which leads to customer satisfaction. Meaning, When collaborating, the marketing team can help in finding the right products as per the customer’s need and the customer service team can then ensure that the customer remains satisfied and every query of the customer is cleared. This results in customer satisfaction and also builds a positive business image.
Only Marketing and Customer Service’s departments are responsible to build a personal relationship with the customers. Hence, they should be working together to enhance sales.
Following are the ways in which Marketing and Customer Service can collaborate.
5 Ways in which the Marketing and Customer Service team can collaborate
Sharpening Ideal Buyer Persona –
Drafting out an Ideal Buyer Persona or in other words, a profile of the ideal customer for your business is crucial. As we dig deep into this, this helps us in getting to know a lot of things like needs and preferences of the customers.
Your Marketing team can leverage the data gained through website analytics and social media to gain insights about the target customers. This combined with the customer service’s real-life experience of dealing with customers will help in carrying out impactful marketing campaigns. As a result of this, both of your teams will be able to communicate with your customers with a personal touch that might lead to more conversions.
Exchanging customer data
Both Marketing and customer service teams should document their interactions with customers. And both the teams should be allowed to gain visibility about each other’s interaction as to gain a proper perspective about the ongoing situation.
This real-time customer sentiment will allow your marketing team to refine their messaging and develop more customer-relatable content.
Exchanging customer data helps in transparent customer interaction which ultimately leads to customer satisfaction.
Proactive Upselling and Cross-Selling
Your Customer Service teams should be able to proactively upsell and cross-sell your products whenever the opportunity is there. For this, the customer service teams should be well-trained to give relevant product suggestions according to the current issues faced by the customer.
Marketing teams can collaborate with customer service teams by providing them with product knowledge and marketing materials on complementary products or high tiers.
Proactively Upselling and Cross-selling your products will eventually help in increasing your sales as well as doing this tactfully will also add value to the customer experience.
Building a Feedback Loop for Product Development
Your customer support team holds the treasure when it comes to the consumer feedback. The marketing team should collaborate with the customer service team to analyze customer feedback both negative/positive for identifying common trends in the customer needs and product shortcomings.
This valuable information helps in product development. Customers are satisfied when they see their feedback taken seriously. Building a feedback loop for product development helps your business with addressing customer pain points for creating new products with features that resonate with your target audience which ultimately leads to customer loyalty.
Post-purchase engagement
The journey of your customer does not just end once a deal is made. You should make sure that your customer is happy even after the sale. Marketing and customer service should collaborate on post-purchase nurture campaigns.
Marketing teams can create content such as “how to” videos or user guides while customer service teams can draft personalised follow=up emails to ensure smooth customer experience. Both the teams should make sure that this ongoing engagement keeps the customer happy. This in turn will result in product adoptions, open doors for future upselling and referrals, leading to longer-term customer relationships.
The Two types of Collaboration Approaches –
Horizontal Approach –
As the name suggests, Horizontal Collaboration believes in teams collaborating that are of the same hierarchical level. Meaning, they can be of different departments, but they should be on a similar level or position in the company.
An example of this in our case can be the marketing team approaching the customer service team for some help.
Vertical Approach –
Unlike Horizontal collaboration, Vertical collaboration involves people of different departments and levels collaborating for the same project. Meaning, a senior level official can collaborate with a rookie in this kind of approach.
An example of vertical collaboration in our case can be a regional marketing rep collaborating with an individual from the customer service team on some issue.
Advantages of both teams working together –
Increased Sales –
Both marketing and customer service teams working together leads to optimum utilization of resources within a business, a better flow of information across multiple departments and enhances the decision making ability for the business as a whole.
As a result of this, a business is more likely to achieve its ultimate goal which is to increase its sales.
Better Customer Satisfaction –
Improving customer satisfaction is directly correlated with business sales. How many people buy from your business depends upon how these people look at your business. Are they happy with your products? Are they satisfied?
When marketing and customer service teams align, they create consistent messaging for the customers. Valuable feedback can be taken and put into actual use. This creates a sense of value for the customers as they think their opinion matters. Hence, increasing their satisfaction.
Better Lead Generation –
When the marketing and customer service team works together, they both can combine the information gained from running various marketing campaigns and customer feedback in order to know the requirements of their current as well as potential customer better.
Knowing your customer better leads to better conversions as you address their pain points and work on them as a business. This can be achieved with much ease because of the alignment in two departments.
Also Read : Increase Sales For Retail MSME Shops In 2024
Conclusion –
To summarize, strong alignment between the marketing and customer service teams can help your business in significantly boosting its sales. As discussed in the blog, this can be done through sharing customer data and insights, improving marketing campaigns, development in products and enhancing the overall customer experience.
All of these things can be achieved in less time with the combined efforts of the marketing and customer service teams.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
What are the benefits an organization can achieve through marketing and customer service collaboration?
Marketing and Customer Service teams collaborating can improve customer satisfaction, enhance lead generation, sales and lead to better product development.
How can marketing teams leverage customer service data?
Customer Service teams usually have valuable customer feedback and concerns. This data can then be used to create buyer personas, refine marketing messages and develop targeted campaigns on social media.
How can customer service teams upsell and cross-sell more effectively?
Marketing teams should provide product knowledge and suitable marketing materials to recommend complementary products to the customer service reps.
What is the role of customer feedback in this collaboration?
Customer feedback is a valuable piece of information which helps marketing teams in understanding the customer requirements as well as needs to develop product that resonate with them.