@Harry: Thanks. Delivering on the customer service promise is indeed
one of the most difficult ones to deliver on.

@Rajesh: There’s a lot of debate going on in social media circles on the linkages between social media, marketing and PR. I think it’s a very interesting discussion and merits a full (long) post of its own. Coming soon!

@Becky: I agree. All customer-facing activities — including customer support — are indeed the moments of truth in which the brand promise is delivered to the customer.

Thank you for sharing your ideas, and amazing how quickly you picked up my post on this. In my blog post, I didn’t actually say that customer service is marketing or should replace marketing. Here is what I said:

“Customer service is one touchpoint with the customer (albeit a very important one). The customer’s overall experience with a company needs to be consistent and planned in order to lay the foundation for optimal relationship-building opportunties.”

In other words, customer service is one place customers touch a company, and as it is one of the few post-purchase points of contact, it is very important. Customer service, marketing (in all its channels), and sales all need to work hand-in-hand to coordinate their approach, language used, and look and feel in order to create a consistent customer experience. In a sense, then, all customer-facing activities are “marketing” in that they impart the brand to the customer.

I hope this helps clarify my position! Thanks again for the conversation.

Why should ANYONE disagree with that? What you are saying is absolutely correct in the marketing logic of things - identify need, satisfy that etc. and there public relations, social media are all tools.

Even if social media was to become mainstream, marketing as we have known it until now will continue to be and play its role.

I like the 3 Cs though - Control, convenience, choice that the customer seeks/ demands.

On a macro level, public relations and its encompassing faces of public affairs etc. can be even larger than marketing…

In perspective of context you write this, I totally agree with you.

Interesting analogies in your “Marketing Chain of Being” version of Maslov’s chart, thanks for helping me think of these in a different way.

I see we both posted on this topic on some of the same blogs … I may also be in the minority but I agree with you, customer service is not “the new marketing”. Like you I also work on branding, plus on both traditional and new media advertising. To me customer service is a very important FACE for marketing, because it’s a very core way of proving that you are truthful to your branding, but it is not marketing.

Social media is one of many vehicles that can communicate personal referral and feedback information. Every few years the customer service topic becomes newsworthy again, when some different tools get used to more quickly promote good experiences and rant about bad experiences (which exposes brands that do not “walk the talk”). Today it’s Twitter, FaceBook, etc. A few years ago it was blogs. Before that news groups, etc, etc. To me customer service (which is the face of a customer centric attitude) will always be something that a lot of firms talk about, but don’t actually deliver, and social media networks are today’s way of consumers proving or disproving the truth of that branding and spreading that information to their networks.

Keep up the good writing, enjoying it!
Harry
http://www.harrybishop.ca

I actually do think that we are taking about similar things from a different point of view. For one, I am looking at it from a purely “public” relations perspective, not marketing and certainly not branding.

To my way of thinking what you suggest, cultural currency, resides in branding. I think that your Chain of Service is a great addition, but I don’t think it is an customer service OR chain of being, which is how you first presented it.

Also, I don’t think that social media is marketing, that is ludicrous. Social media doesn’t nearly reach the number of people necessary to make a cultural phenomenon. Great tools? You bet. I just wanted to clear that up as that is not my position.

I agree with you that customer service CANNOT be the *new marketing*.

My point was perhaps slightly different - that Customers ARE the Service - this is different in that for service I seek out my peers for advice online - not the manufacturer of the product.

Great post.

Tom O’Brien
MotiveQuest LLC

I’m not saying that public relations and customer service are not important. All I’m saying is that marketing is not equal to public relations plus customer service.

I have a theory on why it is so difficult to agree on that simple statement, which I have explained in an update.