Are you building up customer culture bonds?

Even if it’s not in your DNA, you need to become both a good marketer and negotiator. In fact as a Customer Service Manager, mastering such skills is not less important than excelling with digital ones. Especially if you want to build effective cross-department customer culture bonds within your organization. Here are ‘two moments of truth‘ where mastering the above competences is paramount to succeed.

1. Informing and promoting customer service

Despite technological platforms and tools, if you ask an employee to describe what another department effectively do you’ll be amazed. And if you work within that described department you’re bound to be disappointed. Want an example? A few months ago I attended a meeting at a client premises, held by the customer service manager. The main goal was to enhance customer culture bonds showcasing towards 2 other departments:

Customer Service main goals and internal structure (staff)
Inbound conversations with end customers (volume and channels stats)
Updates about ongoing projects (updates)

Well, at minute 15′ of the meeting one of the attendees (marketing) went: “so, are we delivering customer service also over Whatsapp?” Then other two colleagues added: “we didn’t know it either“. Note: Whatsapp customer support had been launched over a year earlier. Beside that, the customer service manager did a great job illustrating and promoting the department, selling the added value. And did it also in further meetings, video calls and emails.

So what he actually did over the last 12 months? Day by day he was able to gradually change other departments’ perception about what customer service IS and DOES: from an expensive area that handles raging customers, to a business driver where conversations nurture relations. Good marketers would call it ‘re-positioning’.

Of course, becoming a good marketer with internal stakeholders does not happen over night. And if you’ve been working several years within customer service / operations you need to change your mindset.

mindset

💡 Related article: how to match customer support and sales

2. Getting more budget for customer service

As mentioned in the first line of this article, another skill that many customer service managers need to dramatically improve is the art of negotiation. While they’re pretty good when it comes to investing in technology solutions or consulting and training (first hand experience!) they are definitely not the best sales people. In fact whenever they ask for a budget to enhance Customer Service, they’re not as smart and convincing…because they’re used to prevent and fix issues, not to sell!

The point is that customer service managers’ agenda is challenging more than ever, trying to strike balance between the integration of Gen AI, optimizing digital conversations’ flows, team’s up-skilling and other amenities. In a nutshell, if your customer service / experience manager you know that the game is tough and previous budgets are not enough: you need more money. That’s why you need to build solid culture bonds as well as being more and more convincing in your next conversations (because the first time you won’t get a ‘yes’).

To help you get actionable tips, I’ve dedicated chapter 3.5 ‘Budget for leaders, none for laggards’ to this hot topic in my book ‘The Power of Digital Conversations‘. So if you want to delve into this matter, I suggest you reading it.