Does your business connect its customer service with its marketing efforts? Great customer service is an excellent way to trigger word of mouth marketing. And we believe word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing. So it is essential that you pay close attention to the customer service assumptions you are making. The wrong ones can damage your business in many ways.

customer service assumptions — Customer service assumptions.

Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.

Seth Godin

Related: 7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Exceptional customer service is a key brand-building element in the brand management strategy toolkit to make brands attractive. In the ever-challenging task of integrating and aligning the marketing, brand and customer service and customer experience strategies, marketing professionals and brand strategists must ensure to extend their strategic focus to customer service.

Here is a short video that can inspire great customer service.

However proper customer service is often left as an after-thought, which is only dealt with when a customer issue arises. A bad assumption, isn’t it?

Not the strategy you should be following. Here are more key customer service assumptions you should avoid making:

The world of change is slow and easy to stay ahead of

It is just the opposite, unfortunately. Today the customers make the rules. As Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired magazine wrote: “… a company’s brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is.

The new taskmasters are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried on in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones now.”

More complaints mean more cost

The simple fact is the solution to most issues raised by customer service are no-brainers. Believable and simple explanations work best. And remember this, it is much cheaper to meet the needs of your best customers and keep them happy as your customer.

Most customers complain when there is a problem

Hardly. The truth is less than 25% ever complain at all. Of those that complain, somewhere between 4-25% complain only once.

Would you believe only 1-4% of complaints go up to the management chain? We are shocked by this statistic. While 70-90% of customers don’t ever complain, they do tell an average of 3 people bad things.

So you see where the focus should lie, don’t you?

Infrastructure for customer loyalty is relatively easy

It’s not about a few kind words and a smile. There are at least many ways to add value to customers, to create better relationships, and to hook them into doing business only with you.

And the best news of all is that these are relatively cheap, and even free. Nevertheless, it’s about something much deeper than training staff. It requires your business to make some dramatic changes to the very fabric of your company and its operations.

Customer care and loyalty are “nice to have.”

The logic is being nice to customers doesn’t show a big ROI. Don’t they buy what they need, and if we supply it at the right price we should be okay?

Nothing can be further from the truth. There is ample evidence that taking care of customers has a specific and measurable return. They come back, again and again, which has some implications. We spend less on marketing to loyal customers and don’t have to focus as much on keeping rivals out.

They tend to be far less price sensitive, and the cost to serve them reduces as we get to know them better. Finally, they are more open to upgrades when they are happy, and they tend to be far more forgiving if things occasionally go wrong.

Also, they are far more likely to refer and recommend the businesses, which they trust.

Customer Service Processes: The Go-Getter’s Guide for Success

Invest more in marketing than customer service

Today we believe the simple fact is that word of mouth marketing is the most powerful component of marketing. And guess what? Customer service is one of the best ways to create an explosive word of mouth marketing.

So no, we believe you should be spending as much or more on your customer service as your marketing. It is your best means of marketing.

Unhappy customers can be managed for damage control

When you count the cost of replacing lost customers, the damage of a poor reputation as more customers uses social media and traditional media to tell others about their experiences.

The amount of effort and cost needed to deal with complaints and problems will overwhelm you.

Satisfied customers will return

Unfortunately not at all true and increasingly so over time. In today’s connected world where customers find it easier than ever before to make the right choices at the right prices.

They need to feel tied to your organization at the hip, or they will be lured away. There are many, many ways of creating loyalty and adding value to your customers. (see below.)

The world around us has changed dramatically

Today the customers make the rules. As Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired magazine wrote: “… a company’s brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is. The new taskmasters are us.

Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried on in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones now.”

To end our expose on the greats of customer service, we will examine an excellent letter about customer service sent to a bank by an 86-year old woman.

The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times. After reading this letter, we found that fact to be amazing. Guess this manager had a sense of humor and no knowledge of customer service:

Dear Sir:

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month.

By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it.

I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.

So what do you think of this letter and the bank manager’s response? Amazing, huh?

The bottom line

Empowering a customer service team can be key to the overall success of any company. While we could go on for days about the benefits that come from giving your call center employees autonomy, this is the top reason you should actively work to support your customer service employees.

WINNING ADVERTISEmeNT DESIGN — Want to build a winning advertisement design?

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing. And put it to good use.

It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and customer service?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer service strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add to the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

10 Next Generation Customer Service Practices

Handling Customer Complaints … 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.

Seth Godin

Related: 7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Here is a short video that can inspire great customer service.

However proper customer service is often left as an after-thought, which is only dealt with when a customer issue arises. A bad assumption, isn’t it?

Not the strategy you should be following. Here are more key customer service assumptions you should avoid making:

The world of change is slow and easy to stay ahead of

It is just the opposite, unfortunately. Today the customers make the rules. As Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired magazine wrote: “… a company’s brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is.

The new taskmasters are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried on in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones now.”

More complaints mean more cost

The simple fact is the solution to most issues raised by customer service are no-brainers. Believable and simple explanations work best. And remember this, it is much cheaper to meet the needs of your best customers and keep them happy as your customer.

Most customers complain when there is a problem

Hardly. The truth is less than 25% ever complain at all. Of those that complain, somewhere between 4-25% complain only once.

Would you believe only 1-4% of complaints go up to the management chain? We are shocked by this statistic. While 70-90% of customers don’t ever complain, they do tell an average of 3 people bad things.

So you see where the focus should lie, don’t you?

Infrastructure for customer loyalty is relatively easy

It’s not about a few kind words and a smile. There are at least many ways to add value to customers, to create better relationships, and to hook them into doing business only with you.

And the best news of all is that these are relatively cheap, and even free. Nevertheless, it’s about something much deeper than training staff. It requires your business to make some dramatic changes to the very fabric of your company and its operations.

Customer care and loyalty are “nice to have.”

The logic is being nice to customers doesn’t show a big ROI. Don’t they buy what they need, and if we supply it at the right price we should be okay?

Nothing can be further from the truth. There is ample evidence that taking care of customers has a specific and measurable return. They come back, again and again, which has some implications. We spend less on marketing to loyal customers and don’t have to focus as much on keeping rivals out.

They tend to be far less price sensitive, and the cost to serve them reduces as we get to know them better. Finally, they are more open to upgrades when they are happy, and they tend to be far more forgiving if things occasionally go wrong.

Also, they are far more likely to refer and recommend the businesses, which they trust.

Invest more in marketing than customer service

Today we believe the simple fact is that word of mouth marketing is the most powerful component of marketing. And guess what? Customer service is one of the best ways to create an explosive word of mouth marketing.

So no, we believe you should be spending as much or more on your customer service as your marketing. It is your best means of marketing.

Unhappy customers can be managed for damage control

When you count the cost of replacing lost customers, the damage of a poor reputation as more customers uses social media and traditional media to tell others about their experiences.

The amount of effort and cost needed to deal with complaints and problems will overwhelm you.

Satisfied customers will return

Unfortunately not at all true and increasingly so over time. In today’s connected world where customers find it easier than ever before to make the right choices at the right prices.

They need to feel tied to your organization at the hip, or they will be lured away. There are many, many ways of creating loyalty and adding value to your customers. (see below.)

The world around us has changed dramatically

Today the customers make the rules. As Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired magazine wrote: “… a company’s brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is. The new taskmasters are us.

Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried on in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones now.”

To end our expose on the greats of customer service, we will examine an excellent letter about customer service sent to a bank by an 86-year old woman.

The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times. After reading this letter, we found that fact to be amazing. Guess this manager had a sense of humor and no knowledge of customer service:

Dear Sir:

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month.

By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it.

I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways.

So what do you think of this letter and the bank manager’s response? Amazing, huh?

The bottom line

Empowering a customer service team can be key to the overall success of any company. While we could go on for days about the benefits that come from giving your call center employees autonomy, this is the top reason you should actively work to support your customer service employees.

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing. And put it to good use.

It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and customer service?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer service strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add to the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

More reading on customer service from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

10 Next Generation Customer Service Practices

Handling Customer Complaints … 8 Mistakes to Avoid

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.