Call Center Management Featured Article
The Place Where Marketing and the Contact Center Align for Social Selling
Once upon a time, the contact center was an entirely different function from marketing. While the two departments may have liaised occasionally, it was usually in the form of a warning from the marketing department that a big campaign was about to drop, and call volumes were about to spike.
The truth is that today, there is more and more overlap between the contact center and the marketing department. “Social selling,” or using social media to promote and sell products, requires cooperation between both departments, particularly if the contact center is engaging in outbound work. Many business analysts will say today that the best kind of marketing is the best customer service, and the reverse is true, as well. Great customer support is also great marketing.
“Social media is a great opportunity to engage with your customers, talk about business and also make sure that you are able to engage their hearts and their minds,” wrote Mitch Carson for Caribbean News Now. “What that means is that you are going to be able to get people passionate about your business with the right marketing.”
Historically, the contact center was considered a money sink: a cost center that was a necessary evil, but did little to propel a company’s sales. Today, with omnichannel customer support and social selling and marketing, the contact center (when properly managed) can become a sales asset to any organization.
“When it comes to making sure that customer service is great, there has been a huge change as well as there has been new ways of marketing,” wrote Carson. “There is a change in the way that marketing as well as in the way that customer service interface. What that means is that it is very important to make sure that you know that your social media and also your marketing are aligned.”
Regular, daily (if not hourly) collaboration is critical to make the most of the marketing and contact center relationship when it comes to social selling. Call center management needs to work closely with their counterparts in marketing, and both functions need to be pulling in the same direction (or they risk undoing each other’s efforts). The company will also need to build a social selling strategy from the ground up and ensure both functions know their part in further it.
“The conversations should be guiding, shaping, and engaging your customers in a meaningful way,” wrote Carson. “That means that you will make sure that you have a conversation that is engaging and also one that will be able to let you talk and engage. When you are not on the internet, there are many things that people forget about and they do not know what is that common and what is not that common.”
Engaging with customers in a customer support manner via social media opens up enormous opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. It also helps ordinary customers become net promoters, or willing sharers of your company’s marketing message. With this strategy in place, customers actually volunteer to be part of the company’s marketing and customer support strategies. And what could be better than that?
Edited by Stefania Viscusi