So you finally bought into the hype and purchased that new flying lawnmower.
There's only one problem: It doesn't actually fly.
The advertisements you saw on Facebook, the testimonials in the email you received, even the salesperson you spoke to were all just misleading enough to make you think a lawnmower that helps you “fly" through your yard work could actually take to the sky.
You're unhappy with the purchase, but when you call the company's customer service line, they have no clue what you're talking about: They've never seen, heard, or been told about the marketing promises you were given. You end up unsatisfied with the conversation and vow to do all you can to trash the company online.
Though it's unlikely you've encountered this exact scenario, it's a situation we're all familiar with—contacting customer service only to discover that they're completely unaware of their own company's marketing materials.
When customers feel they have been mislead by marketing, they're going to take their frustrations out on customer service (CS).
To maximize customer happiness, it's vital that marketing and CS teams better align themselves so that marketing has a clear understanding of customer frustrations, and CS is familiar with marketing campaigns.
Your small or midsize business (SMB) needs to start working on marketing and CS alignment right now, because Gartner predicts that by the end of 2022, two-thirds of all customer service interactions will be handled without a human intermediary.
If your human CS employees are left in the dark regarding marketing campaigns and—as a result—provide an unsatisfying customer experience, imagine how much worse it'll be when your customers are interacting with artificial intelligence.
Your CS team, whether human or automated, must have an accurate knowledge base that includes past and current marketing campaigns, or else you risk losing customers and accruing damaging online reviews.
Below, we'll cover four tips on how to best align your marketing and CS teams and look at examples of SMBs that have done the same with great success.
4 tips to help align your marketing and CS teams
1. Consolidate outward-facing departments
Marketing, CS, and sales all have something vital in common: They're outward-facing departments. Employees on these teams interact with the public on a daily basis (whereas teams like HR or IT focus on internal issues).
To make sure that all of your SMB's outward-facing departments give customers the same information and narrative, consider integrating them into the same business unit.
This is what online video coaching and collaboration platform Sibme does, according to its director of marketing and customer success TJ Hoffman:
"All of our customer-facing teams are integrated under one umbrella, and we meet weekly . . . Data collected from our customer support and customer success teams informs marketing materials we create, including webinars, blog posts, and newsletters."
Here's what we can extrapolate from Sibme's example about the value of integrating these teams:
Customer service representatives are made aware of marketing campaigns and initiatives.
Marketing representatives are made aware of customer service feedback.
Sales representatives are made aware of how customers react to marketing materials and what their typical feedback is.
The best option is creating a new, unified, outward-facing business unit at your SMB, but at the bare minimum you must make sure that these teams (particularly marketing, CS, and sales) are all on the same page when it comes to a key aspect of your business—software.
2. Use integrated software
Even if your marketing and CS teams aren't meeting in person every week, they must use software that lets them access each other's data and information. This way, marketers can learn more about customer feedback while CS representatives have access to marketing materials and customer campaigns.
Alessandra Gyben, content and engagement specialist at GreenRope, explains that integrated software ensures that:
Each team has access to up-to-date and accurate data that will help them better serve the customers. Marketing uses CS data to create content and develop a better understanding of their target audience. The ability to access customer service data, inquiries, resolutions, etc., means a marketing team can better equip the company with content that resonates with its target audience.
GreenRope's “Command Center" dashboard, which provides an overview of all sales, marketing, and customer service activity related to a customer/account (Source)
Integrated software that can be used/accessed by all outward-facing teams can be just as helpful as regular meetings between those teams. Christoph Seitz, co-owner of shipping company CFR Rinkens, found that combining two software platforms made a world of difference for his company:
"We combined our Customer Relationship Management platform with our Marketing Automation Platform to help marketers on our team connect crucial campaign strategies with their financial outcomes. This provided our salespeople with better visibility into prospecting and leads . . . [and] allowed our marketing team to hand leads over to sales."
You don't need to worry about finding one software solution that handles all tasks for your various teams. You can utilize entirely independent systems, as long as they can interact with one another through integrations.
If you're not sure your current system(s) can do this, talk to your software vendor(s) to find out.
3. Encourage a symbiotic relationship
It's easy to see the value of your CS team having access to marketing assets. When they know what customers are being promised or told to expect from your products/services, they're better equipped to respond to customer needs, complaints, and problems.
It's important to remember, though, that CS isn't the only team that will benefit from this alignment. Your marketing team can learn a lot from your CS team, and stronger alignment between the two will help you create stronger marketing materials.
According to Nicolas Straut, content marketing associate at Fundera:
CS can provide valuable insights into the strengths of a product or service to emphasize in marketing campaigns. They also more fully understand the average customer and their expectations and use cases.
In addition to team meetings and access to each others' materials, Straut suggests some other ways for teams to develop stronger relationships:
Marketers can listen in to customer services calls or read transcripts of CS exchanges.
CS representatives can sit in on marketing campaign meetings.
Marketing emails can be sent to CS representatives via blind copy (bcc) or through the CS team's access to the marketing team's software.
The goal for all of this is to create a more consistent sense of branding across departments, so that when customers contact CS they feel like they're talking to the same entity that first contacted them with marketing materials.
4. Create a unified brand voice
When customers feel misled by marketing and contact your customer service department to complain, odds are that the whole issue started with some form of miscommunication.
Assuming your marketing materials are all being created and presented in good faith (they're truthful, transparent, and not attempting to mislead customers), then the lack of unity between those materials and CS interactions comes down to a question of branding and voice.
One of the benefits of aligning your marketing and customer service teams is the creation of a unified voice that sets the tone for your entire brand. This way, your customers see your company as a single entity, rather than multiple competing departments.
Digital marketing expert Gabrielle Nickas explains how this can be a problem:
Your marketing team conceives and creates a social media ad on Facebook, but the comments back and forth with users are addressed by CS in a lot of cases. The message in the social media post should match the tone and messaging in your comments, otherwise you've just undone the branding that your marketing team put forth; your brand now looks more disjointed than if they hadn't put forth a marketing message to begin with.
To save yourself this embarrassment—and the loss of customer trust, loyalty, and business that accompanies it—make sure that your marketing and CS teams are on the same page when it comes to branding, messaging, offers, and voice.
Takeaways
It's easy enough to say that you need to align marketing and CS to create happier customers, but actually doing so is another matter.
Use this handy list of takeaways to develop a solid alignment action plan to help your SMB create a unified, outward-facing front that takes your customers by storm:
Hold regular meetings between your customer service, marketing and sales teams (and consider unifying them under one business unit umbrella).
Select software for both marketing and CS that gives the departments easy, integrated access to each other's data and materials.
Allow marketing and CS representatives to sit in on each other's planning meetings and calls.
Make sure that all content from your marketing and CS teams reflects a single style guide to create a unified brand voice.
Follow these tips, and your marketing and CS teams will soon soar higher than a flying lawnmower.