December 7th, 2007
Is Customer Service the New Marketing? Of Course Not!
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Quick Summary: Read about how engagement is only the middle level in the ‘Marketing Chain of Being’ and how social media and customer service are only tools to create engagement.
The topic of the week in the marketing and public relations blogosphere is whether customer service is the new marketing, so much so that there’s even an upcoming event on the topic.
Most of the posts on the topic have focused on how social media is causing customer service and public relations to merge into each other to form the fabric of a new marketing paradigm.
I’m a brand manager, not a PR practitioner, and I can’t but feel that the above statement is rather simplistic. Yes, customer service is important. Yes, word of mouth is important, and, by association, public relations is important. Yes, good (or bad) customer service is an important factor in creating favorable (or unfavorable) word of mouth. Yes, social media gives customers the tools to amplify word of mouth. Yes, yes, yes and yes. But that’s only part of the story. Let me tell you the real story by going back to my post on the Marketing Chain of Being.
There are five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being — commodity hell (think groceries), differentiation (think automobiles), engagement (think Dell), cultural currency (think Nike+iPod) and meaning (think Google).
The aim of all brands is to move from commodity hell to differentiation to engagement to cultural currency to meaning — and there are no exceptions to this rule.
Dell is often held up as the perfect example of a company that has embraced social media, and it has indeed done a fantastic job in creating differentiation and engagement in a product category stuck in commodity hell, but compare the handful of Dell evangelists with the hordes of Nike or Apple or Google evangelists and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
So, is customer service important? Yes. Is customer service more important than ever before? Yes. Is customer service the new marketing? Of course not!
As you can see from the comments below, I have managed to annoy some marketing/ public relations blogging biggies with my insistence that marketing is not equal to public relations plus customer service.
I have a theory on why it is so difficult for us to agree on that simple statement, but before I come to that, let me first set the background with The Three Laws of the Marketing Chain of Being –
- The first law is that all brands want to move up the Marketing Chain of Being.
- The second law is most brands can move up the Marketing Chain of Being.
- The third law is that very few brands do move up the Marketing Chain of Being.
Why do only a few brands move up the Marketing Chain of Being when all of them want to and most of them can?
Let’s forget the upper half of the Marketing Chain of Being for a moment and focus on the lower half. If discipline backed by resources is all that is required to move up from commodity hell to differentiation to engagement, it’s surprising, and maybe even shocking, that such few brands have reached the engagement level.
The brand manager in me rationalizes that brands haven’t been able to build genuine engagement on a widespread basis because they haven’t had the right tools for it so far.
In response to that, the marketing thinker in me wonders why Dell is the only name that comes up in case study after case study on engagement when social media has given brands the tools they need to build engagement.
I understand why social media enthusiasts have a tendency to equate marketing with social media. Social media gives brands the tools they need to deliver genuine service experiences and move to the engagement level in the Marketing Chain of Being. However, brands are still struggling with social media and such few brands have mastered these tools that its easy to forget that engagement is only the middle level in the Marketing Chain of Being.
Once again, I’m not trying to belittle the importance of social media or public relations or customer service. All I’m saying is that the best brands (Apple, Nike, Google) don’t operate at the engagement level; they operate in the upper half of the Marketing Chain of Being, and concern themselves with creating cultural currency and meaning.
Valeria Maltoni started the conversation with her post at FastCompany and Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Neville Hobson, Susan Getgood, Kami Huyse, Wendy Harman, My Creative Team, Becky Carrol and Tom O’Brien have posted interesting perspectives on the topic.
Of course it is…
It’s an outbound strategy now. In social media, conversations reverberate and in many cases spark threads across the Web.
Your thoughts are also right on. It’s all important. Participation IS marketing and outbound customer service IS participation.
In many cases, we can link participation to significant sales and referrals. It’s already happening.
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@Brian: Let me try to be exact in my contrariness.
I am saying that engagement/ participation is a subset of marketing and there are higher level goals for brands. It seems to me that you are saying that engagement/ participation is marketing and there are no higher level goals for brands. These are two fundamentally different views of what marketing is and what brands need to do.
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I addressed some of this in a reply to your comment on my post about this, but thought I would bring it here too. I agree that we must have bigger goals beyond just customer service, but until we acknowledge that the customer service aspect is the realization (or disabusement)of the PR and marketing hype, we will get nowhere. The person representing your company is the one talking directly to the customer rather than the one with the great theories inn the C-suite.
Once you have read about 1,000 “X Company Sucks” posts, and realize that X company does not intend to do anything about this knowledge, do you start to realize that customer service is an elemental ingredient to the PR effort. That said, 100 percent satisfaction is impossible.
Only then can we go on to your Maslow’s Triangle type idea and self realization.
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@Kami: I think we are saying the same things, but from different (client vs. agency) perspectives.
I totally agree, by the way, that
[quote comment="5516"]until we acknowledge that the customer service aspect is the realization (or disabusement)of the PR and marketing hype, we will get nowhere.[/quote]
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I’m with Kami on this one, Gaurav. To me the chain is a beautiful thing and nothing at all without the people. Thank you for adding to the conversation. For the record, I’m on the client side.
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@Valeria: I’m clearly in the minority here, but I don’t quite understand why.
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.
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Guarev:
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
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Guarev; First, I am hoping you are not referring to me as a “blogging bigee,” Valeria perhaps? LOL And I am certainly not annoyed.
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.
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Hi Guarav -
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
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“marketing is not equal to public relations plus customer service.”
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.
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[...] “Is Customer Service the New Marketing? Of Course Not!” [...]
[...] an earlier post on whether customer service is the new marketing, I had identified the role of social media in marketing by saying that social media is only a tool [...]
Hello Guarav,
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.
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@Tom: I agree. Peers were always one of the most important sources of product recommendation; with social media, the role of peer product recommendations have only increased.
@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.
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That's very insightful, I graduated marketing and I realize that handling right the customers service and a perfect proof of professionalism because in the end it's the customer's opinion that matters. On the other hand marketing is far more complex and I also agree that customer service is a good tool for good marketing.
http://graphic-identity.blogspot.com/2008/09/an...
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