The Secret Weapon of All Smart Marketing Companies - Their People

How many times have you personally been snagged by some marketing campaign or another only to walk away without buying anything because when you actually came into personal contact with the company, you were turned off or disappointed by the experience?

You call a phone number and get one of those maddeningly impersonal phone trees that make all of us want to hang up.  You walk into a store and the sales people either ignore you, act like they're angry about something or they know nothing about what you're interested in.  You send an email and no one responds or the response is not helpful.

Earlier in my career when I was in the agency business, we did a research project for a client that was desperately seeking some way to differentiate themselves from bigger competitors with stronger national customer service reputations.  We uncovered a gem for them.  The single best thing they could do to stand out, according to their prospects, was to eliminate their automated phone answering system and move to live operators.  The client choose not to listen to the research.  Why?

Because the phone system, despite it being the most intense customer contact tool they had, was not considered "marketing."  The phone system and everything to do with it was part of "operations."  It was cheaper NOT to have live operators.  It was also insane marketing.

The best ads, web sites, promotions, direct marketing and PR can all be undone by one knucklehead on the phone or in the store.  Conversely, mediocre traditional marketing can be overcome with great personal service.  Word-of-mouth is the best advertising.  And the best way to generate it is with incredible personal one-to-one service.  

The smartest marketers realize that and they make sure that the marketing team is either in charge of or deeply involved with all decisions related to any type of customer contact.  It's marketing insanity to consider your customer contact people and systems "operations."  Your people can and should be the most important marketing tool your company has.  If you're not thinking this way, it's time to start.

All your customer contact people should be Brand Ambassadors, capable of preaching the marketing gospel of your brand to anyone they come into contact with.  It's not that hard.  It only takes the right kind of recruiting (are you listening HR?) and the right kind of ongoing training, reward and retention system.  For models, look at companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Nordstrom's.

Is it smarter to spend more of your budget on more marketing stuff?  Or is it smarter to spend more of your budget training (and then retaining) your customer contact people to be the best brand ambassadors they can be?