Customer Service vs. Customer Engagement

"En-GAGE!"

I am always surprised by how many businesses confuse the concept of Customer Service and Customer Engagement.  When I inquire about Customer Engagement strategies, their minds subconsciously make a word swap and they begin telling me about their latest and greatest customer service initiative.  I am not sure why this happens, but when it does, I give them the following analogy to open their minds.

The 90% Rule

90% of marketing happens AFTER your customer contacts you, however most businesses spend the vast majority of their marketing budget on awareness initiatives.  How could this be?  It comes down to the fact that the most easily measurable statistics for marketers are awareness indicators (e.g. click-throughs, page views, phone calls, Facebook “Likes”, etc.).  Businesses would do themselves a big favor if they devoted more of their marketing efforts to customer engagement and measured revenue and repeat business.

Engage Employees With Facebook????

During a recent strategic planning session with one of my clients the subject of Social Media came up.  Almost immediately the owner of the company rolled her eyes back, and made one of those "hrumph" sort of noises, indicating her displeasure.  She went on to explain that her employees "waste time" on Facebook, and that productivity suffers as a result. I saw this as an opportunity to explain to her that people may waste time socializing when they should be working, but it is hardly the fault of Facebook.  

Reduce Workplace Stress During The Holidays

Here we go again.  The Holidays.  It is one of the busiest times of the year in resort communities like the one I live, and it can be especially stressful  because it occurs at the beginning of the tourist season when companies are still staffing up and training new employees.  Helping your employees to deal with holiday stress is one of the most important things that you can do as your valued customers arrive in hordes.

Slow Marketing

Perhaps you're familiar with the international "Slow Food" movement.  As the name  implies, it is the antithesis of the more familiar cultural term "fast food."  While nationwide chain restaurants continue to focus on how to cook meals faster, cheaper, and more homogeneous, the slow food movement embraces the unique characteristics of regional cuisine and strives to promote sustainable farming & ranching.  At the root, it is an artisan movement focusing on quality rather than quantity, and experience over efficiency. 

Copy This Practice

Earlier this month, my wife went out of town for a couple of weeks to help her company with a project in Denver.  Before she left, she asked if I would bring her car in to have some service done, to which I agreed, of course. 

As I called Teton Motors, our local GM dealer, to schedule an appointment, it occurred to me that the car would be listed under my wife's name.  When I arrived at the dealer a few days later, I let the gentleman behind the service desk know that I was dropping the car off for my wife, offering her name to help him easily locate the file in the computer.  Sure enough, he found it right away.

"My name is Bruce," he said extending his hand over the counter to shake.  "Please let me know your name, and I will add it to the records for this vehicle."

Immediately, I was impressed.  This gesture seems simple enough, but believe me, it is more complex than you may imagine.  Bruce identified an opportunity to use a conversation to connect with one of his customers, and he executed it very well.  Let me explain.

Know Thy Customer

I made the mistake today of Googling "Ten Commandments of Marketing." I wanted to know where "Know Thy Customer" ranked on the de facto online authority (as deemed by the highest search engine rank). Looking back, I know it was a dumb idea. I had expected that a dozen or so people would have posted their version of this fictional list of marketing dos & don'ts, but I had no idea that there would be more than 83 pages of results! That is more than 800 individual websites referencing some version of the Ten Commandments of Marketing. 

Ten Commandments of Modern Marketing

...Social Media Marketing

...Guerrilla Marketing

...Green Marketing

...Networking

...Better Networking

...Great Networking

Then things started to get weird...

...Ethnic Marketing

...Marketing for Chiropractors

...Marketing & Promoting a Horse Business

And my personal favorite: 

The Ten Commandments of Mafia Marketing

I also really enjoyed the Hip Hop Ten Commandments which really had very little to do with marketing, but almost made me fall out of my chair from laughing.