Call Center Management Featured Article
The Value of Customer Service, Marketing & Sales Alignment
I am not a big fan of debating politics. Clearly we need to discuss issues to educate people on the issues, and create greater citizen engagement and enlightment. But often talking politics involves two or more people or groups just talking at each other. And no one’s listening. That’s often because the different sides simply have different views of the world.
The marketing, sales, and service efforts at organizations sometimes have a similar dynamic.
They consist primarily of great people who want to do a good job. But they have fundamentally different views of the world. And that creates a disconnect.
Just consider how these different departments think about customers and prospects. Marketing is all about segmenting and creating personas for customers and prospects so they serve them up the most relevant messages. Sales is focused on closing the deal and refilling the pipeline with new prospects and potential deals. And customer service organizations like contact centers want to close troubletickets.
So it’s no wonder why these different departments are often at odds, or at least not completely aligned with one another to allow for a holistic approach to and 360-degree view of the customer.
The businesses that can figure out how to align the interests and systems (like CRM, customer service data, etc.) of these different interest groups, however, will understand prospects and their own customers better than the competition. And they’ll be best positioned to build lasting and enriching relationships with customers.
“The new reality is that marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers,” says Jill Rowley, who is now chief growth officer at Marketo (News - Alert).
Meanwhile, HelpScout talks about how by aligning customer service and marketing, businesses can deliver improved customer experience. Without such alignment, customer support may not address the efforts marketing is promoting; the different teams may frustrate customers by reaching out to them too often, and potentially with conflicting messages; and organizations may miss out on opportunities to identify and connect with potential brand advocates.
Edited by Maurice Nagle