Why excellent Customer Service is crucial to your Marketing strategy

Customer Service can be a strong competitive advantage

It’s not at all uncommon for more than 2 businesses to have the same target market, same products or services, even the same stakeholders. Giving this, how do you stand out? What can help you gain more market share?

That’s right — exceptional customer service can be your competitive advantage. And it’s not hard at all, since only a small percentage of companies really invest in customer satisfaction via customer service. You’ll be part of a small niche that values in actions, not in empty words, their customers.

Customer Retention is easier and cheaper than Customer Acquisition

In other words, by providing fast and helpful Customer Service, clients will stay with you instead of going to your competitors. Once you can satisfy your customers when they need help, you won’t have to do much else to market them. Existing customers or those in the last stages of a customer’s journey are more likely to make a purchase, compared to those people who just heard of you.

Word of mouth is still king

Building on the previous point, what do you want people to hear about you? How do you want people to feel when they hear your name? Your product or service rarely will be that good to generate organic word of mouth, but human interaction or experiences about it definitely will. How the customer service team is behaving with your customers needs is also a great reflection of how the company is doing internally, so keep in mind to keep your employees happy. What’s more, if you give your current customers a reason to stay (and yes, that could be exceptional customer service), you might not even have to invest that much in other marketing tools as well.

Buying is still an emotional action

You have access to the raw needs, wants, concerns and thoughts of your customers each time they are in contact with your customer service team. Customer Service employees have the real buyer persona, right in front of them or right in their ear. Based on these insights, you can prepare both your products/services and your employees. Excellent customer service means to relate to your clients pain points and have the competencies to serve them. Every sale is an emotional decision, whether you like it or not, so make your customer service emotional, backed-up by strong technical knowledge.

One last thought: Make Customer Service part of your Marketing Strategy so you can decrease costs and increase sales at the same time.

For just a few seconds, think about: climate change, social media, economic and political crises, the current pandemic, relationships, the store is out of your favorite product, living becomes less and less affordable, you fight with your loved ones over stupid things. Heavy, right? But even the less heavy things happening around us have a saying over you, overall. Small, medium or big, your everyday thoughts and actions are experiences that impact your physical and mental health.

If you can treat a headache with a pill, an unspoken emotion will just duplicate itself in your mind. Emotions are processed slower and they can be more intense than physical pain, and the one method that we can deal with them is to talk about them. If we don’t do this, they just pile up inside of us — that’s why we have those anger bursts, for example. We should talk about our thoughts and emotions as we think and feel them, not once a year or once at several years.

Here is why you should talk about your mental health

It helps you deal with your emotions. “I don’t know what I’m feeling” or “I don’t know why I’m feeling this” are common phrases we use that demonstrate our inability to talk about our mental health. Trying to verbalize what you are feeling is the first step in understanding your emotions. I know, it’s not easy doing it — it isn’t something that we are teached in school, nor are there many environments free of judgement where we can do this. Unfortunately, it is (still) your job to find the place where you can share what you’re going through — it can be a journal, a friend, a family member, a website or on social media. Whichever you choose, be mindful that talking about your mental health should help you deal with your emotions without adding any negative ones.

It helps others open up. You’re not alone in what you’re feeling! But how can you know this, if you don’t share what you are feeling? This circle goes for every single one of us: “I don’t communicate what I’m going through because the fear of *insert your poison*, but also because I didn’t hear anybody talking about this.” “You want to see change in the world, start with yourself”, one saying goes, and it can’t get more true when talking about mental health. Once you share your things, others will do it too. You will not feel alone in what you’re feeling, ever again.

It helps raise awareness. Mental health is still a taboo topic in families, about friends, and especially among workplaces. It shouldn’t be. “I have a headache”, “I didn’t sleep well last night”, “My stomach hurts” — you say all these with such ease, whenever they happen. Why should it be hard to open up about their reasoning as well? “I have a headache because I fought with my mother, and I felt unappreciated”. “I didn’t sleep well last night — I dreamed badly because of my anxiety”. These are all normal feelings for everyone and it should be normal to share this. Of course, this doesn’t mean to go screaming on the street about them (unless it’s a scheduled protest/march), but the least you can do when asked “How are you?” is to reply truthfully, instead of the meaningless “I’m fine, you?”.

It helps break down stereotypes. You can be a student, a starting professional or the CEO of a big organization — titles aren’t a shield for mental health difficulties. Sharing what you’re going through mentally won’t make you less good at your work or in your personal life. Others may have the instinct of treating you, at first, like a porcelain vase, but soon they’ll see how strong you’ve become due to sharing your struggles.

How to talk about your mental health

Don’t blame others. Instead of saying “x did that and I am feeling this”, try to deep-dive in your feelings alone. Find out what triggered that feeling and when you experienced it first. Others can’t make you feel in any way — it is always something within us that allows or doesn’t allow us to experience a certain feeling or emotion. You control you.

Don’t throw intense words in other people’s faces. Remember, you talking about this can be a trigger for someone who isn’t ready to deal with his own problems.

Find your channels. Enjoy writing? Think of a journal, a blog or social media (be careful of the latter). Enjoy talking? Schedule calls with friends, family members or self-record yourself. Are you more of an artist? Paint, draw, sing your pain away.

Find your voice of tone. What is that best suits you: a mellow, indignant, resentful, understanding or activist tone of voice? Or a combination of these? There is no right or wrong here. The most important thing is that you find your own voice, because it’s your own mental health you’re talking about.

Research, but pay attention to the source of what you’re reading. Oh, the internet is full of MD information, but this doesn’t mean that all of it is good. Most probably, you won’t resist the instinct of googling what you are feeling, but keep in mind to filter the data you find. Avoid reading shady websites and go to trustful sources (like WHO).

Talk to you like you talk to a friend that you want to hold accountable. Self-pity never helped anyone, so take the empathy & accountability road. Talking about your mental health is just the first step in living a better life. So, after you empathize with yourself, think of solutions. What can make you feel better? What can you do next time you’re feeling such emotion?

You gain work experience in your preferred field

Volunteering is one of the first and easy things you can do to get more clarity and a real taste about one field or another, no matter if you are a disoriented student or an employee who is considering switching careers. Almost everyone is open to get people on board as volunteer because there are just so many things that can be done in any place.

Want to be a doctor? Volunteer on an ambulance and see if you can resist the pressure. Want to see one day in the life of a lawyer? Send an email to a lawyers’ office and ask to do some work for them. Want to find out how a software engineer makes that app work? Well, for this you kind of need to self-learn a bit and then just do it. But you get the point. Basically, while volunteering, you do shadowing and steal the best practices of the job.

My advice? Volunteer to startups and non-profit organizations. A corporate can live by its own until some point, but these people are just creating their own space in the market. Help them. And help yourself. You don’t know when you will use one of the services one startup will provide in the future and I guess you won’t mind if you get extra discounts for setting up that service, right?

Volunteering has thought me to learn how to juggle various tasks, to do multi-tasking, and to differentiate between soft and hard deadlines. I was a Marketing volunteer in many student organizations, doing PR, copywriting and graphic design for so many projects, even establishing strong brands. Starting 2013, I had acquired the hard skills needed in this sector and this helped me getting clients and jobs in the Marketing industry without having academic-related studies. Volunteering was a true advantage over other candidates in the work field.

Put those 2 hours that you probably spend on Netflix each afternoon into learning something new that will help both other and you. You will get you closer to your dream job. Or not — but at least you know what’s the deal.

Free entrance to events and easy access to information

I like festivals, but I absolutely love them when I can be in the backstage. Especially before starting! You need a strategy, a plan, providing food and drinks, making sure that all the safety and healthy measures will be in place. You need to adapt quickly when something is missing or people are not showing up. Just like at any other project, that’s true.

In 2016 I was a volunteer to Anim’est International Animation Film Festival, the only festival in Romania dedicated to animated film. I was sitting at the info desk, offering guidance and information to guests and customers, along with brochures, flyers and name tags. Another thing I did was to make sure that the jury of the competition arrived safely to their accommodation. I drove together with another volunteer to the airport and sat with a sign that stated Animest in my hands, so that the guest would recognize us. From there, up to the hotel room, asking about their well-being, offering some administrative info and let them rest. When finished, we went back to the location of our stand and resume our main task. The really nice thing about this experience? Got free entrance to any movie (even the most expensive ones) and got to know people who later become partners in different projects.

Now, in September 2020, I was a volunteer at the Maker Faire Eindhoven show (and tell). As you can imagine, organizing a festival during Corona times is not a 🍰. More than 200 stands and more than 15K guests/day were present last year. This year? Maybe 50 stands and less than 1K guests/day. As a volunteer, I greeted people at the entrance, checked their tickets, presented the map of the building and reminded them of the Corona measures they have to respect. I also wandered around the building to make sure that people actually respect the measures and that the time slots were enforced. I also volunteered to setting up the scene (more than 100 meters square) and that preparation fuss provided me with quite an adrenaline. I got up on a crane at more than 10 m high and hung up lots of banners, some of them having dimensions of 700x1500 cm or even more! What I got out of this experience? I had bonded with one of the colleagues I will work this year at Kickoff EHV and got to know other people (prize-awarded individuals — one of them is developing a technology that will show early signs of breast cancer for young women at even 20 years old), along with getting meal coupons to fancy restaurants and a home-delivered gift after the ending of the festival.

Festivals and any other big events are a way to increase your network and build relationships with people from truly different backgrounds, which will benefit you in the long run by securing you paid gigs.

Your network will double or even triple

Volunteering not only gives you work experience, but also many opportunities to grow your network. Especially during this period, networking is the best free tool you can use to form business relationships and friendships with people all over the world.

Since you can volunteer in almost any industry, you have many events and projects at your disposal that you can get involved in. Go and demonstrate your skills, apply your knowledge and grow your network. If you are a technical person, you can volunteer setting up hackathons, which are an excellent networking environment.

Whatever volunteering work you do, remember to interact and build relationships with other volunteers and with the organizers. You are there to help them and they are there to help you. It’s the perfect symbiosis.

Volunteering makes you a better person

At your studies or at your work, your bubble is pretty much stable. Safe environment, known colleagues and procedures, nothing spectacular. If you have a 9–5 work schedule, chances are that, afterwards, you either go to the gym, cook, read a bit, scroll infinitely on Social Media channels or become a couch-potato and press the play button on a streaming platform. Not that is anything wrong with these things, of course! But I can only talk from experience: volunteering helped my mental heath and improved my physical condition, due to the demanding speed at which I had to operate sometimes. Another thing I noticed both at me and at other was that that feeling of altruism put us in a state of general well-being. To know that you did something useful for others is pure gold. And when you know that you satisfied your personal interest as well (be that in terms of skills, knowledge or just feeling better), you really feel content and proud of yourself.

It’s a big world out there and so many things can’t be done without volunteers. Remember: you volunteer to help yourself, others and the entire world. Find something that match your values and passions and kickoff your volunteering experience!

4 Reasons Why You Should Volunteer (More Often) was originally published in The CEO amusement park on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.