Customer Service: The Differentiating Factor and Social Media Marketing’s Role

With every factor that goes into marketing, many companies, especially major corporations, tend to over look the very basic essentials that can ultimately be the deciding factor in customer loyalty. Two words, customer service. In the article “Can Social Marketing Save Customer Loyalty”,  from the Chief Marketer, awareness is created that shows just how crucial customer service is and uncovers the secret is of some of these big corporations and how they maintain phenomenal customer service, social networking.

Zappos, Intuit, and Comcast, are just a few companies that are crowned as king of customer service and how they have utilized social networking to their advantage. Customer service is essentially the last factor to differentiate companies, however, the experience in dealing with a company and their product is a large percentage of retention in customer loyalty. Yelp is a social networking site that is purely dedicated to customer reviews, ranking their experience and satisfaction with a company.  Studies have shown that through customer service, customer loyalty or the loyalty effect can increase retention by 5% which can inevitably lead to an increase in revenue anywhere from 25-85%.

Are Social Networks the New Pen Pal?

Once upon a time, life was simple.  We used pen and paper to write letters to our friends or we spoke to others in person.  Times have changed and so has the way we communicate.  Today, we don’t even like to be bothered by others calling us on the phone.  We’d rather text, e-mail, twitter, or myspace our messages.  I can remember hearing about children who would wait weeks to receive a letter in the mail from their pen pal in another country.  Now, both children and adults speak cross-continentally at light-speed through the internet.  In fact- it seems strange not to know people in another country now.  So, as our times are changing – I can’t help  but wonder – “Are social networks the new pen pal?”  What’s next?

Jennifer Daily