Content marketing think like a publisher chapter 15 content and customer service

The very basis of any content plan is to serve the needs of varying customer constituencies: to educate and inform them, to answer their questions throughout the buying cycle, and to hel

15

Content and Customer

Service

“All content marketing is customer service.”

In a very real sense, all content marketing is customer

service The very basis of any content plan is to serve the

needs of varying customer constituencies: to educate and

inform them, to answer their questions throughout the

buying cycle, and to help them better understand and use

the products and services you’re offering.

So how can digital content best address customer service

issues? The most strategic approach is three-pronged:

• Anticipate and address needs in advance.

• Create feedback mechanisms so new issues can be

folded into the support process.

• Develop a one-to-one response process to respond to

individual queries.

Not surprisingly, each of these approaches comes complete

with its own set of challenges and layers of complexity

Anticipating and Addressing Need

Anticipating and addressing customer needs is something that electronics

manufac-turers strive to address That’s understandable for products that are inherently

com-plex, but other businesses can learn lessons from the varying levels of support that

companies such as Sony provide on their website Better yet, that support is

sur-rounded by content (see Figure 15.1)

Figure 15.1 Sony’s support site is rich in content options to help customers solve their

problems without having to contact customer service reps.

For each product Sony sells, there are 10 different paths customers can take on the

Sony website to address their support needs:

• Download drivers

• Download software

• Get answers to FAQs (frequently asked questions)

• Read news and alerts

• Watch automated tutorials

• Get information about how to obtain a repair

• Use a contact link for reaching support personnel

• Register a product

• Shop in the Sony store

• Visit the user forum

Figure 15.2 Dell segments its support by customer type to help users find the content

they need faster and more easily.

Sony and Dell have done an excellent job of anticipating customer needs and

creat-ing content to address the needs of multiple customer segments Not only is the

support based on user type (are you an individual or a huge corporation?), but the

navigation and information architecture also enable users to self-serve and zero in

on the type of content they prefer You may want to read a manual You might plan

to download a PDF, while I prefer to absorb that knowledge by watching a video

Sony knows this and offers various content alternatives

What’s the value in creating deep, rich customer support content in multiple media

formats? Plenty In addition to addressing customer needs with the service they

expect and demand, creating easily navigable and accessible support content

reduces customer support calls and emails This is particularly true if you want

repeat business, which we all know is much more valuable than one-time buyers

All of this translates directly into content ROI

Create Feedback Mechanisms

Occasionally, there’s a company that actually encourages customers to contact

them Zappos has built a successful business on exactly this high-touch model If

you mouse over Help in the Zappos navigation bar, the call-to-action is a highly

unusual Talk to Us pop-up (see Figure 15.3) This pop-up encourages customer

calls, emails, and live chats However, even the Talk to Us pop-up links to a fairly

extensive FAQ page that contains plenty of text content addressing the questions

that Zappos phone reps are used to answering (see Figure 15.4)

Navigate over to Dell’s customer support, and you’re immediately channeled onto

an appropriate page for your particular needs, whether you’re an individual user, a

small business, or a large enterprise (see Figure 15.2)

Figure 15.3 Believe it or not, Zappos actually wants to talk to its customers.

Figure 15.4 Zappos still provides online FAQs for those who want them.

Creating and publishing content around the calls and emails coming into a support

center is only one aspect of creating feedback mechanisms that continually inform

and lead to the creation of new customer support content going forward

Monitoring customer support forums for issues and problems that crop up with

new and old products is another way of learning what types of content should be

added to FAQs, manuals, videos, and other support channels

External listening is critical, too Although customers will often raise issues with a

company directly, they’ll also air problems, fixes, and issues in general elsewhere on

the Web: on Facebook, via Twitter, in user groups, and on discussion boards It’s

likely that customers (and prospects) are catching wind of customer service issues

“in the wild,” rather than in relatively safer confines of your own website In fact,

while writing this chapter, I was also troubleshooting an issue with my Kindle I

found quite a lively discussion from other users having the same problem on

www.kindleboards.com, along with shared information on how customers were

resolving the issue with Amazon Amazon is obviously paying attention The

moment I contacted Amazon about the issue, it said it was aware of it and

unhesi-tatingly sent a replacement unit

That goes beyond great customer service It’s customer service that positively

res-onates in user-generated content across the Web, not just in the company’s own

customer service content By monitoring those external posts and conversations, a

company can sense an impending problem or even a crisis Better yet, a company

can then take steps to address and combat the problem with content—and

eventu-ally, even with better products Of course, this will only happen if the feedback loop

extends back far enough into the organization, as it should

Creating One-on-One Communication

The final step in addressing customer service–oriented content is one-on-one

com-munication No matter how good, how thorough, how many channels, and how

multimedia-driven your customer service content is, your organization is going to

have to talk to, email, tweet, or otherwise address service concerns individually It’s

private communication, but these days even private communication between

com-panies and customers frequently comes into the spotlight Customers have become

as eager to “review” customer service in public forums as they are accustomed to

reviewing their latest purchase on Amazon Customers are also eager to vent

cus-tomer service complaints in public forums such as Facebook and Twitter

An important first step in customer service is an email auto-response message to

customer inquiries and complaints that is sent to a customer as soon as customer

service is contacted This message should, of course, be composed in the voice of

the organization and clearly outline how and when

the customer can expect a personal response to his

or her issue It may, for example, promise a

response within 12 hours, or within one business

day—a reasonable timeframe that won’t leave the

customer hanging or wondering if they’ve sent an

email inquiry into the void Naturally, it’s

incum-bent on the company to actually deliver on that

promise of help within the promised timeframe

Of course, customer service has bled into broader

channels than email Twitter has become an

impor-tant customer service channel, and many

compa-nies now have dedicated teams in place who spend

their time addressing customer service issues in the

channel

“Customers are also eager to vent customer service com-plaints in public forums such as

Facebook and Twitter.”

One early Twitter customer service success story is Comcast The company’s

reputa-tion in customer service was abysmal; no-show repairmen, unresolved service

out-ages, and billing complaints created a firestorm of negative verging on vitriolic

complaints on Twitter and in other social media channels Frank Eliason, a Comcast

employee, put together a team that started addressing customer complaints on

Twitter (see Figure 15.5) “How can I help?” was an oft-tweeted response to

com-plaints about service The teams also supplied phone numbers, email addresses, and

escalated and routed issues to the proper departments in the company

Figure 15.5 ComcastCares started as a grassroots effort by one small group of

Comcast employees.

The now-often imitated initiative was, and remains, a runaway success Twitter

cus-tomer service is clearly not a solution that scales well, but although Comcast is a

nationwide company with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, it did solve

numerous customer services issues nationally and created enormous goodwill in

the process It’s a public relations coup: customers began to believe a monolithic

conglomerate actually does care

Eliason has since left the company, but @ComcastCares boasts more than 52,000

Twitter followers and counting And the model has been imitated (see Figure 15.6)

by companies large and small, in industries ranging from automotive (Ford) to

financial services (American Express)

Figure 15.6 Many companies, including Ford, have imitated the ComcastCares

initiative.

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