Customer Support As A Great Marketing Tool

Assume for a minute that you are managing the online activity of your brand, so that you can change the look of the brand and do so, by handling the social media accounts. In doing so, you see that the business is being promoted; however, the promotion does require some unique content. A time might come when you don’t have any ideas left, and you receive emails from your customers. If you’re an ordinary marketing manager, you would forward those emails to customer support, but if you think out of the box, then you will use those emails to grab the marketing opportunities it gives you.

Even though these ideas may seem like you can’t use them, but it is a fact that customer support and marketing are related to each other. When a marketing manager or anyone promotes their business, they want to show potential customers that their present customers have a good relationship with them. You might also want to show them that you know how to handle difficult situations and in doing so, you will give them a reason why they should buy your brand or seek the services of the brand.

There are different benefits of using customer support as a marketing strategy. Some of these benefits are as follows:

1. Makes You Proactive For Your Customers

As a marketing manager or brand manager, you might have your focus on attracting new customers. However, before that happens, you need to ask yourselves if you’re catering to the current customers or not. In order to make the current customers comfortable, you can’t just listen to their problems and solve them, but you have to do, whatever it takes to give them quality services that they deserve. You need to make sure that your current customers don’t find services and marketing of another brand more attracting than yours, or they won’t be loyal to the brand.

In times of sharing things like videos and pictures, interaction with customers and marketing needs to be done carefully, because customers can take screenshots of the way a brand handles a situation. For example, if a customer is satisfied with a brand’s response, they might share their satisfaction on social media, or even dissatisfaction if the brand doesn’t handle things effectively.

A similar thing happened to UK-based Reddit user, Doug D. The customer ordered a sweatshirt from an American website, called Archival Clothing. In the Archival Clothing customer support department, an employee noticed that a sweatshirt chosen, was in the shopping cart and wasn’t checked out. They found out that the reason behind this is that the shipping costs were high, which is why Doug D. didn’t check out.

The company sends an email to the customer, and suggested that there are other ways, through which the customer’s order can be shipped for less amount. The positive thing that happened here was that Doug ordered more things, apart from the sweatshirt. The thing to note here is that, even though the customer didn’t sent a query to the brand, about their shipping costs, the query was still handled by the brand, because they want to increase the number of customers they have.

When a brand finds different ways through which they can provide customers with best services, then the end result would be customer satisfaction and increase in number of customers. The customers would then endorse the brand on social media websites, without any compensation. This means that if a brand handles customer service the right way, then they can also get free and genuine marketing.

2. Effective Communication Between The Brand And Customers

A brand needs to come up with different ways for their customers, to reach them. They should make it accessible for customers and giving them just a phone number, isn’t enough. A brand needs to make sure that they answer any questions that the customer might have. Showing customers that their queries will be answered right away, and they are an important asset for the company, is one way to build trust. This way, the company is not just building trust with the customers, but also a reputation for the brand. Consumers of all brands use social media, and they share their experience with a brand and its customer support department, in particular. The experiences can be bad, or they can be good; this is up to the brand. So, the brand should find out ways, to assure that they do their job well, and provide customers with good experiences. Customer support and how well it performs, is a way through which brands can measure customer experience.

Brands need to show their customers that their problems, opinions and voices are heard by the brand. The brand needs to guide them, if they need guidance, because when a customer buys a product from a brand, then they expect things from the brand as well. The best thing to do here, is to actively communicate with them; active communication means not to make them wait, when they are facing a problem with a product and answering their problems, fully.

One of the best experiences that customers may remember when they buy from your brand, is how you communicated with them. If a brand wants to attract more customers, then they need to establish good relationships with them. Establishing good relationships would automatically provide more free marketing for the brand and would also make its reputation better. The brand would be known as a business, with whom the customers like to do business with. This would bring in new customers and would also make the brand’s image stronger in the mind of the existing customers.

There are many other marketing strategies that brands and businesses should look for. One such strategy can be the email customer support strategy. In this email customer support, the brand would ask the loyal followers, to email them their concerns about the brand and what they want to see changed.