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At least once a week I read a new blog post or article in some industry report touting customer service as the new marketing. There are even groups cropping up in SV and other tech cities for just this purpose, conducting webinars, dedicating entire conferences to shedding light on this new movement- huh? I must be missing something, or I’m just too dense to see it- here’s how I see it….

For as long as I can remember customer service IS and always has been marketing. Here is why- if you look up the definition of Marketing you’ll find a few “old school” definitions here is one….The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.” And how is customer service defined? Per wikipedia- Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.

For the life of me, I cannot understand how customer service got separated from Marketing? I think of it this way- customer service is real people interacting with real people a.k.a. prospects, suspects, customers to deliver on the value proposition of your company. Why do we think with the wave of popularity of SM will change this?

Before the internet (gasp- who remembers that?), the only face or voice customers experienced was sales folks or customer service folks. Before companies had websites, twitter, blogs and all the other SM stuff they had face to face or phone selling and customer service. Even back in those says customer service was marketing- we just called in good service back then

The suspicious side of me, says maybe customer service professional are really behind this entire initiative. What if they are driving this in evil underhanded attempt to get the respect and $$- budget allocations, they so desperately eed and deserve? After all customer folks everywhere are doing the most difficult job with the least amount of respect. I say, go for it, and I hope the effort makes significant changes for all customer service organizations.

So, while I don’t agree that social media is creating a new movement to re-define or re-position customer service as the new marketing, if the result is more companies pay attention to customers and build advocacy centers a.k.a customer service, client services, customer care organizations that are funded for success and have a voice in the company, then I’ll buy in to Customer Service is the new Marketing!

Tags: Common Sense Customer Service, Food for thought, Perfectly Plum //