Customer service is not a department, it’s your product

Marginalising customer interaction is like conversing through a catflap

Why is it that many of us try to remove personal interaction from our dealings with our customers, at the same time as telling them personal interaction at events is what makes our industry so valuable?

Customer service tools are sophisticated, automated and in many cases, able to take action in advance of customer demand.

But the exhibition industry is built around doing business face-to-face, and if that doesn’t align with our customer service, then dissonance creeps in; a big issue where customer retention is through the floor.

Quality customer service builds trust (UK automotive magazines make a big deal of the annual JD Power Customer Satisfaction Survey), and the correlation here is that as technology and communication evolves, trust itself becomes an increasingly valuable business asset.

Make your customer service part of your marketing

The plot thickens when you consider the fact that our expectation of quality customer service is now so low that people rarely consider it in the first place. If they don’t trust brands to act in their existing customers’ interest, then they certainly don’t expect brands to help those with a grievance or even a simple request.

This means, as Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland pointed out in an exchange on LinkedIn recently, that even if your customer service is excellent, people don’t get to find out.

“People are reluctant to connect with new businesses for the same reason. They assume that, if anything goes wrong, they will enter a whole world of pain.”

“[UK energy provider] Octopus Energy’s approach to advertising, which focuses almost exclusively on the customer experience, makes complete sense, once you understand this.”

So put your devotion to customer service out there for everyone to see. Run it through your marketing as a common thread and create brand activations that demonstrate it in action, not only intent.

Provide coverage on customer feedback sessions and case studies on the changes you’ve made. The triumphs yes, but also the errors you’ve acknowledged and corrected. Put a human face on that chatbot-fronted monolith and keep it busy.

It’s mind-boggling to think that we spend almost US$800 billion a year on advertising, and very little indeed on creating a rewarding journey for our customers. Or so an industry retention rate of just 30 percent would indicate.

We love ringing that bell when we make a sale, but we do little to nurture that client while we flick through our little book of leads for the next.

It’s stranger still to think that we do this despite our proposition being defined by the quality of our customers. When visitors enter the hall, our customers are what they see first.

Very few businesses can make that claim, and having our loyal customers onside needs to be our first priority.

Any business with high customer churn should stop chasing new business and focus on customer service. Not because it’s nice, but because it’s highly profitable.

In the exhibition industry more than any other, customer service is not a department, it’s your product.