It’s a harsh reality and one that marketers are not ready to accept for the most part. The people you are trying to communicate with on social media or email or any other channel don’t really care about you or what you have to offer. They want to know “what’s in it for me ?”
Marketers This concept have trouble understanding because marketing people today work with masses of data and people. They are not used to dealing with individual needs and individuals. Today marketing is as much about engaging current customers as it is about getting new customers. Once you have sold a customer you could just as easily lose them with bad customer service
Social media is a great channel for marketing not just customer service because customer service is probably just as important to marketers as new ad and marketing campaigns. When customer service is seen as a cost the main objective is to deal with people quickly and get them off the phone or the Internet. Once you see customer service as a key marketing tool, however, you begin to see things in a different way. You realize that customer service is an important part of your brand equity.
Here is a great example; We have been living in our new home here in California for almost four and half years. Our appliances are GE Profile and they are starting to give us pesky problems like a microwave whose door won’t open and whose trim is coming off along with a dishwasher that doesn’t do a very good job in cleaning dishes anymore.
The GE website is about as user friendly as a thorn bush and their toll free number has the “you’re call is important to us…”. I therefore went on Twitter to tell my followers about the poor quality of GE. At the end of the day I had a Tweet from Megan at GE and responded and one day later she then gave me an e Mail address to get more information. Does this make me a satisfied customers ? Would it make you a satisfied customer ?
When it comes time to replace our appliances I can assure you that they won’t be GE Profile appliances and that I will not recommend them to anyone. Sure GE is monitoring social media but their follow up actions leave a lot to be desired. This is a great example of why customer service is such an important brand of your brand today.
