I’m Convinced Customer Service Is The New Marketing. Thank You Buffer
How do you choose between two leading social media management platforms?
There’s the typical decision criteria like cost, features or timeline. All these criteria are valid and should be considered.
But for me, what pushed me over the edge and helped make my decision was … how I was treated as a customer.
At work, I had to choose a paid subscription on either of the two leading social media platforms; Buffer or Hootsuite. Both were equally capable at meeting my needs and I had to justify my decision to my bosses for budget.
It was timely that I had to contact the customer service staff of both platforms for two separate issues. As you can see below, the difference in customer service responses were remarkable.
Buffer
The Buffer customer service team’s response left me with a warm, fuzzy smile on my face. :)
Now, let’s compare this to the Hootsuite response.
Hootsuite
This response answered my question, but it left me cold. It made me think of auto-generated letters you receive from government organisations or banks.
What can we learn from this experience?
As a software marketer working with a freemium product, I learned several valuable lessons from this experience.
1. Don’t forget about your customers on your Free plan.
Its easy to focus on prioritising your paying customers over your free customers. Paying customers typically have larger accounts and higher expectations. But like me, customers on your Free plan may be inches away from becoming a paid customer.
Perhaps they’re actively searching for the next (paid) subscription tier to upgrade to, just like I was.
I almost upgraded my Hootsuite subscription until my experience as a customer left a sour taste in my mouth.
Especially if you’re on a freemium business model, taking care of your customers on your Free plan is critical.
Be attentive to their needs.
Deliver the best customer service you can ever give.
Your customers will love you.
2. Customer service matters.
The old adage rings true: people buy emotions and justify with logic.
Hootsuite is technically superior to Buffer. It can monitor social media streams, has more integrations and is more versatile.
Buffer is fantastic at content publishing and is much sleeker to use.
Both tools have their place in the digital marketer’s arsenal. Yet, if I was making a buying decision purely based on logic, I would have gone with Hootsuite.
With Hootsuite, I was getting a much more feature-rich tool.
However, this customer interaction convinced me to go with Buffer instead. When Hootsuite’s response was to “send in a feature request to the development team”, surely she meant well, but it did nothing to solve my immediate problem and left me feeling ‘meh’.
Instead, she could have suggested a work-around or alternative solution. In contrast, Buffer gave an immediate, actionable response and probed further for more information, which made me feel like she was sincere about helping me.
Lesson learned, you can have the most technically superior product on the market, but this means nothing if your customer service is not up to par.
3. Sound like a human
”Thank you for being a valued customer. Your call is very important to us and we’ll be in touch soon”
Everyone calling a help desk support line has surely come across this oh-so-popular line that makes you want to roll your eyes out of your head. It sounds robotic and impersonal.
That’s why I love the casual, yet professional tone in Buffer’s response. Their response radiated warmth and friendliness compared to Hootsuite’s.
“I’m so sorry for the trouble here and I’ll love to help”.
Immediately, her first line establishes that she feels empathy and wants to help me.
She asks clarifying questions throughout — “Am I seeing this correctly”. “I wonder if…” and finally ends off on a positive note “I’ll be happy to continue digging into this one!”. Her response created a safe space for me to explain my problem to her without judgement.
Bottom line, Buffer’s customer support sounded like a human.
In contrast, while Hootsuite’s response technically solved the problem, it sounded like a templated response and unnecessarily formal.
Moral of the story: Customer service is an undervalued marketing channel.
This experience taught me customer service is one of your best marketing channels.
Customer service is a tough job.
When I was in college, I manned a help desk for a company’s medical software suite. One in two calls were from angry or frustrated callers who poured all their frustration on you. You were obliged to listen and think to yourself “smile and nod… smile and nod…”.
Its so easy to tire of people or half-ass your service to get through all your support tickets. Yet, how your customer feels affects whether they’ll upgrade their subscription or even continue using your software.
Customer service is one of the areas potential customers see first. You want them to be at their best. Take care of your customer service staff and they will do your marketing on the front-lines by taking care of your customers.
