Your Job Isn't Over After The Content Is Published: Customer Service is Still Imperative
So the blog post is written; the video is produced; the case study is outlined; and the newsletter went out yesterday. All done, right? Wrong! Our job as marketers does not stop once the content tactic is complete, nor does it stop after the sale is made.
Happy customers are everything to a business. You worked very hard to build that bond and level of trust from your new customer and now your content marketing approach should continue into your customer service.
According to a recent study by Eptica, the average response times for email and Twitter are:
Email: 7 hours, 51 minutes
Twitter: 1 day, 7 hours and 12 minutes
Now, just because that is the average response time for a social media inquiry, that doesn’t mean that your new valuable customer expects to WAIT that long for a response. As it turns out, not as long as the numbers above reflect:
Email: 6 hours
Twitter: 60 minutes
There is a gap here, or to the astute brand publisher, an opportunity.
American Airlines provides a great example of a company using Twitter to accomplish customer satisfaction. Just last year my flight home from Dallas was delayed over 4 hours, and I needed to get home. I tweeted to AA customer service and within 3 minutes they were tweeting back and actively working on a solution to my problem. Ultimately the situation resolved but it was all because it started with an immediate response via Twitter. American Airlines already had my business as the ticket was purchased weeks ago, but they also understood that in order to get the sale again, they needed to be better than the market when it came to customer service.
As we talk through the best ways to grow a business and, in that same vein, ways to differentiate your brand, you must consistently think through “value wedges.” Are you cheaper? Are you a better product (Important Distinction -- IN THE MIND OF THE POTENTIAL BUYER, NOT YOURS)? These are two of the more historical ways to try and differentiate but they aren’t models for long term growth in this century’s marketplace.
How you present to the market, how you connect with the market and how you SERVE the market are all ways you can differentiate your brand from your competitors.
If you can be better at getting you target audience to engage with your message, you have won the most important battle for mind share. Don’t risk that win by ignoring what should happen AFTER the prospect becomes a customer, and eventually, hopefully, a raving fan. I’m talking about customer service. If your communication post sale can be better than the industry standard, you just won another battle of differentiation.
When you think through your brand publishing strategy for 2018, think beyond the sale and make your brand the most accessible brand in the market. When your customers show up after reading your brand messages, you need to be there to greet them. Beyond that, you need to be there with them, for them and ultimately because of them.