@faris RT a post from Naked NY’s Eric Pakurar, everything communicates: the view from the sidelines.
Pakurar posits that most ad agencies are quite limited in their ability to impact brand perceptions because they usually don’t get to address the customer service experience.
First, a fact: The way a business operates — customer service, for example, or delivery, or sourcing, or employee training and incentives — can communicate a great deal to consumers. Everything communicates.
if we are expert communicators hired to give advice to brands, and if a brand’s business operations do indeed communicate a great deal to consumers, then by the transitive property, agencies need to be prepared to offer an informed point of view on how operations can better communicate to a given audience.
But the marketing industry is, by and large, unable to do so.
The value of a supreme 0:30 commercial is easily and immediately undermined by poor customer service.
This ties into Faris Yakob‘s most recent post, Customer Service Is Marketing.
I agree with his core recommendation:
Decide Customer Service the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU DO, because the only route to profit is MAKING CUSTOMERS HAPPY and do it in PUBLIC, reach out to people, don’t put the onus on the individual to battle through the firewall, constantly monitor the social web for people who are unsatisfied with the product or service you sell and MAKE THEM HAPPY.
Then, customer service becomes marketing, and every person you make happy will sing your praises across the web.
Customer relations (in-person communications) and customer service are one of the biggest opportunities for marketing communications agencies. The largest firms (and government) tend to poorly design user experience from both the in-person and digital/OOH side.
The interesting question is, how do we break the siloes down to address and upgrade F500 customer service?
I think the key is going to show how poor customer services shrinks revenues and profits (assuming they do). If we can show this, and show how fixing it is cost-effective and lucrative then we have an opportunity to make corporate experiences a bit more humane.
