6 Ways Customer Service Can Revamp Your Marketing in 2023 (+ Examples)

It’s no secret that great customer service matters — especially online.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

Just one negative Tweet, comment or review is all it takes to completely upend your business and leave a lasting negative impact. Providing great customer service can help save your business from losing money and avoid damaging your online reputation.

Next to that, customer service can help improve the overall customer experience. Using help desk software, you can get direct insight and feedback to better understand who your customers are, what they are looking for, and how to meet their expectations

Not only does this keep your existing customers happy, it’s a powerful marketing tool. Between positive interactions and more engaging content, you can use customer service to attract new customers and grow your business.

This year take your marketing to the next level with exceptional customer service. Below we’ll cover strategies you can implement in 2023, including examples to help get you started.

1. Collect more customer reviews

Online reviews play an important role in both your customer service and marketing strategy.

For customer service, reviews are a way to gather feedback from customers to better understand what you are doing well and where you are failing to meet expectations. This is valuable information that can keep your business adjusting, learning, and developing. If your business is online, you can prompt customers with an email after they have purchased. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you could even make a QR code for in-store customers that directs them to a feedback form.

For marketing, reviews are a key factor in the buying process. 97% of consumers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions. Think about your own shopping habits, are you more likely to trust a business that has dozens of reviews and high ratings or one with no reviews or low ratings?

Many businesses include reviews on their homepage, as it conveys credibility and trust as soon as audiences land on their page. Reviews can also be featured throughout your site, including on product pages.

Having reviews on specific product pages can enhance the overall customer experience and encourage customers who are hesitant to buy. One study found that the purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270% greater than the purchase likelihood of a product with no reviews.

For example, Dyson includes customer reviews on each product page. As a result, they have received some of the best promotions they could ask for, including reviews like “This should be the only vacuum you own. It is pricey, but if you’re reading this, just buy it. Trust me.”

Additionally, using reviews in advertisements can give a big boost to conversion rates. This could be featuring ad copy like “top-rated product” or “five-star rating” in display advertising, sales materials, email campaigns, social media posts, and paid ad text.

Beyond your own marketing materials, having a presence 3rd party review sites can also build brand awareness and generate leads. As these sites often appear in the top search engine results, this can help with SEO efforts and drive more organic traffic.

Which sites you’ll focus on collecting reviews for will depend on your industry. Popular sites include:

• Google (any business)
• Facebook (any business)
• TrustPilot (any business)
• Amazon Reviews (e-commerce)
• Capterra (SaaS)

Looking to Dyson again as an example, one comment proved that all you need to do is ask.

Customer service is a great channel to ask customers for reviews, such as asking while wrapping up conversations in a chat box or in a follow-up email after an interaction.

You can do this efficiently with the right customer support tools where you can conduct several surveys, like CSAT, NPS, etc., to understand your customers’ needs better.

You can ask with a message similar to the following:

Hi (Customer), Thanks for choosing (Company Name). We’d love it if you took a moment of your time to leave a review. You can use this link (link to the review website) here. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with our community and us

The best practices for crafting this message include the following:

• Personalizing the message to the customer
• Keeping it short & to the point
• Having a sincere appreciation
• Including a direct link to the review site

Make sure that it’s simple for customers to review. Links for reviews should be readily available and easy to access, using few redirects and strong call-to-action buttons (CTAs). And of course, these links should be shared when customers are satisfied and have a positive experience.

2. Spotlight your customer’s experiences with testimonials

Much like customer reviews, testimonials are another way to use positive customer experiences for marketing. Testimonials are an endorsement from customers, adding social proof to your business. When other customers see who else is using your products or services — and loving it — they will want to too.

Unlike reviews, testimonials tend to come from your more loyal, long-term customers. It’s likely going to be someone who your customer service team works with frequently and has developed a professional relationship with.

Customer service will know who these customers are and can create a list of those to potentially reach out to and ask if they would like to contribute. Depending on the client, it may even be more effective to make this request through your customer service as they are already connected with the customer.

Testimonials should give insight into the customer experience, including why they enjoy your business and how they have benefitted.

These are some questions that can help generate useful testimonial content:

• What problem(s) prompted you to start looking for a solution?
• What made you choose our business?
• How do you use our product/service?
• How has our product/service benefited your business?
• What is it that you like (or love) most about our product/service?
• What makes our product/service unique?
• What has made you stay a customer of our business?

Include the name, a photo, and the company logo of the customer who gave the testimonial. You can also include the date of the testimonial and how long they have been a customer for.

Video is becoming an increasingly popular tool for customer engagement, including testimonials. Video testimonials can be especially effective because it is more engaging, visually appealing, and audiences get to hear customers share their experience themselves.

Once you gather your testimonials, feature this content on homepages, in marketing content, on social media, or even with a dedicated testimonials page on your site.

3. Build your social media mentions

Thanks to the rapid boom of platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, social media and customer service now go hand-in-hand.

Customers not only expect to receive support through social media, they actually prefer it. 54% of customers say they prefer social media over the phone or email for customer support questions.

But beyond providing excellent support to your existing customers, social media can be used to show future customers what they can expect.

Having social media feeds filled with positive customer interactions is one of the most powerful forms of social proof. Especially since 90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company.

Show future customers how accessible and responsive your team is. Provide answers to questions and resolutions to answers. And be sure to show off your excellent customer service by reposting any positive shoutouts you receive.

Additionally, social media is an effective channel for communicating need-to-know information. This can include product updates, service interruptions, or upgrade information. Providing this via social media is a great way to keep customers in the loop and lessen the number of negative reactions to unexpected changes.

Here are some tips to make the most out of social media:

• Pick the best social media platforms for your business instead of trying to be everywhere
• Be present and active on platforms that your customers frequently use
• Monitor all your social media mentions, not just when you are directly tagged, using tools like Mention
• Be prompt and speedy in your response
• Personalize your responses
• Have a tone of voice that is consistent throughout all channels
• Understand when to take a conversation to a private message or other channels

4. Leverage positive interactions into customer referrals

Excellent customer service gets customers talking. In fact, 77% of customers said they would recommend a brand to a friend after having a single positive customer service experience.

Incentivize these referrals and turn your customers into brand advocates with a referral marketing program.

Affiliate marketing incentives individuals (affiliates) to promote your business and refer customers. In exchange for their promotions, affiliates earn a commission for every successful referral.

Customers can promote your business on their websites, blogs, social media pages, or even word-of-mouth — and use referral links to send traffic and refer customers. In exchange for their promotions, they will receive a commission for every successful referral. Usually, this is when people end up buying a product or signing up for a service.

This is also a cost-effective, low-risk marketing investment. With a pay-for-performance model, you’ll only pay for referrals that actually convert into paying customers and not waste money on ad spend that doesn’t result in any conversions.

Next to that, this is a great way to reward your loyal customers and build brand loyalty.

5. Use customer service insights for paid ad copy

Who knows your customers better than your customer service team? Day in and day out, they are talking to customers about what they are interested in, what they are having trouble with, and what they are looking to get out of your product or service.

This information can have a significant impact on your paid advertising.

Customer service and marketing teams can collaborate together to:

• Create buyer personas
• Understand the most used and favorite features
• Address customer pain points

For instance, a B2B customer service team could be receiving several requests and inquiries from subscription-based services. Meanwhile, the marketing team has been focusing on e-commerce businesses and allocating ad spending to target these audiences. Without this collaboration, the marketing team is missing out on reaching an entire industry that could bring valuable leads and potential customers.

Additionally, analyzing customer service interactions is useful for pinpointing buzzwords. For example, if several customers mention “white label features” and are interested in learning more, then it would be worth trying ads that use the word “white label.”

6. Create more engaging, customer-focused content

Another way the insights gained from customer service is for content creation. Using your customer service and marketing teams, you can collaboratively brainstorm and create content to optimize the overall customer experience.

Start with having customer service compile a list of common questions and issues. From this list, you can create resources such as:

• FAQ’s
• Knowledge bases
• Blog posts
• Case Studies
• Onboarding guides
• Screencast Tutorials
• “How To” videos

Then, apply these resources to the customer experience. Use content to:

• Create blogs to share on social media
• Address customer concerns with an FAQ
• Provide real-life examples from other customers
• Demonstrate your product or service through video
• Establish your role as the industry leader with informative articles

Creating customer content is an ongoing task for both customer service and marketing. But, if well-executed, this content will generate interest to acquire new customers and support customer service by providing self-service information.

Amid COVID-19, Deciem used online content to create an exceptional customer experience. Customers were able to speak directly with Deciem representatives digitally, allowing them to ask questions just like they would if they were shopping in person.

Get Started Today

Don’t let great customer interactions slip away. Start collaborating with your customer service and marketing teams today to begin creating a marketing strategy that leverages the experience of existing customers to acquire new ones.

For more marketing tips, including how to start your own affiliate marketing program, be sure to check out our blog here.