Customer Service, A Key Factor To Product Marketing, by Brian Newmark

Whatever business you are in, there is one universal business truth that applies to everyone. It is far cheaper to retain a customer than earn a new one. If you have existing customer, turn them into your loyal followers and evangelists by keeping them happy. It is the law of compounding at play where you retain old customers and add new ones and this way you will have more customers than what you had in the previous months.

Here, in this article, we will discuss 7 benefits of good customer care for product marketing.

Maximum ROI:

Every marketing activity has a cost. If you get maximum returns on your investment your scalability will improve. This involves retaining old customers and making sure they are not lost to a competitor. Having good customer service can really help in this regard. If there is proper channel of communication with your business and your customers, the customer retain ship ratio will improve and more customers will be added every month.

Building Loyal Customer Base:

There are many benefits of having a loyal customer base; it is more than just getting a sale. Loyal customers are those who always stand by you, they will be the first to try out a new product line of yours or put their names foreword when you plan a launch. An online business has many aspects and the community around your blog and social channels are important. A loyal customer base can help propel your business further.

While there are many benefits of having a loyal customer base, the only possible way to achieve this is by having good communication. Thus customer care is a key aspect in building loyal customers.

Lowering negative feedback on the social media:

Reputation management is a big issue for most brands. On the internet, a quick Google search can reveal almost any secret of a business. If you have unhappy customers or clients, they will start complaining on the social media. These posts and updates about your business will be available on the internet and any future customer can easily check them out.

In a situation like this, having a customer representative to keep an eye out on the social media can help a lot. One cannot help every customer, as it is in the nature of some people to complain anyway, but in most cases if a negative comment on the internet is followed by a customer representative by saying something like – “Thank you for letting us know, please contact … us via this channel, and let us know if we can help you …” improves the reputation of a company by many folds. Your future customers will know that you take customer care seriously and they will trust you more which will lead to more product sales.

Keeping a track of sales process:

This is more of a technical thing. Online product selling companies have a system by which they sell their products, which involves their customers to put items on the cart, then checkout. After the payment has been done, if the product is digital the item is sent out via a digital medium like an email or if the product is physical good, it is sent out via the delivery system. This process has to be monitored to make sure your customers are not having any issue. If the selling cart has an issue, most buyers will abandon it and move on. Only a few will complain and if there isn’t a proper response from the customer support, the issue can persist which will not only kill sales but also damage the reputation of the company.

Keeping a track over after sales support:

After a successful sale, most companies forget about their customers. They already have the money, so why bother with the support? This is such a poor mentality and it will kill repeat business. While on the other hand if you have an active after sales support system, then it can result into lower brand abandonment ratio and even result into more happy and loyal customers.

Gaining insights about the product itself:

Our customers know more about the product than we do ourselves. They have been using the product day in and out and have much experience about it. Every product has room for improvement; they might even have a bug that can be fixed. Perhaps you have been planning for a new version? Answers to all this lies with the customers and a good customer representative can communicate with your customers and gain valuable insights.

Gaining customers by Goodwill:

When we talk about losing customers to other brands and business because of having a faulty customer care, we should also remember that having a good customer care can improve goodwill and gain new customers. People do abandon other brands and they constantly look for a better one, and if this better brand is yours they will join it.

by Brian Newmark