First of all, let me make sure you realize I didn’t coin the phrase “Customer Service is the New Marketing“. I’m not sure who the originator of the quote was. If anyone could answer that bit of trivia, send me a note or comment.
I remember a few years ago I had some poor experiences at a popular fast food restaurant. I won’t mention the name because that’s not the focus of this post. Anyway, I sent their head office an e-mail complaining that their advertising of a particular menu item was misleading and the service was extremely poor. I don’t actually recall if I even received a response to the e-mail. So in this scenario we have traditional marketing (the images of the menu item) and my attempt and complaining when I deemed the marketing misleading. In this paradigm, traditional marketing is what mattered and worked.
Enter a new factor to the scenario – social media. Tools like blogs, communities, forums, ratings, etc. If I was to change the paradigm of the scenario describe above and apply social media tools, the outcomes could have been different. Instead of sending my complaint to the head office, I could have my complaint read by possibly millions of people who could may be influenced by the complaint. So my satisfaction… the level of customer service – good or bad – truly becomes the new marketing.
I came across a blog post on O’Reilly Radar that talks about how Customer Service is the New Marketing. The post also included a video interview from Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction. Check out the video interview below:
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