The art of marketing is not just a well-designed campaign that leads potential customers to a company’s website. To be truly effective, marketing is integrated into every customer interaction. Think of it as proactive customer relationship management. After all, marketing doesn’t determine long-term customer success — it’s just a first step in a (hopefully) long and prosperous relationship. Once that initial step has been made, the next interactions will either continue to build trust and engage the customer or erode the relationship. When leveraged with a healthy dose of intelligent data collection and application, the customer service pipeline can provide companies with a strong long-term market funnel.
Think of it this way. When a company builds an intelligent online interface, or even something as simple as an inquiry form on their website that invites customer engagement, only to drop the ball after that critical first contact, they are losing out on enormous market potential. With today’s robust customer service management tools, companies can and should create sophisticated funnels that effectively guide clients through multiple contact points. As a marketing agency that specializes in attracting, capturing, and optimizing the customer experience, we are full partners in creating an effective service/marketing funnel, touchpoint by touchpoint.
For us, it starts with a deep dive with our client into their process, learning how they engage with their potential customers. We are not just looking for initial inquiries, but how to create a meaningful customer experience. This means creating multiple touchpoints, reducing friction, avoiding “black holes” and moving the contact along the path to becoming a satisfied and engaged customer, and then a returning customer, and a source of future referrals, and so on. To do that, it’s critical to look at the process from the potential customer’s perspective. Are our interactions meaningful, clear, and relational? Do we recognize and address potential questions, concerns, or hurdles they may encounter, focusing on consistent engagement? Are we optimizing automation opportunities while recognizing when it’s time to bring in additional human engagement from sales or service?
Clearly, this is not a “one size fits all” proposition. It takes deep understanding, asking the right questions, and creating customized customer journey maps. Automated customer engagement should not be impersonal. With today’s sophisticated customer communication platforms, we can personalize and tailor content to interject an intelligent and caring human voice into every contact, so potential customers feel seen and heard. When done well, automation can be leveraged to optimize initial engagement and communication while freeing up sales and marketing professionals to focus on higher-level relationship building and sales conversions.
We recently helped one client reimagine how they engaged with service inquiries on their site. Interested customers were using a simple ‘do you offer what I’m looking for’ form on their site to sort them into “yes” and “no” buckets. Potential customers who did fall into established service areas are now flagged for an immediate automated response with everything they need to get started, including answers to frequently asked questions, next steps, information needed, etc. Those who move forward with the process are then moved to communications with the internal team. Those who don’t receive additional automated emails to help them move into the ordering process.
But, as we pointed out, even “no” responses provide valuable data for the company. Previously, they were simply informed there was no service, and the contact and their information fell into a black hole. Our recommendation was to sort those responses to determine levels of service demand by region. Having that information could be a gold mine for management when considering future strategies. Not only does it pinpoint where opportunities are, they’ll have a list of warm prospects to reach out to.
Good marketing can’t exist without strong customer service. After all, it is customer service that will determine how much customers trust you, ultimately making or breaking your brand. A strong marketing campaign must be integrated with personalized, responsive customer service. Are you ready to optimize your customer experience and grow your business? Let us show you how.