Web 2.0 Expo: Customer Service is the New Marketing

Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction delivered one of the best talks at this year's Web 2.0 Expo in New York. (You can check out my full recap of the conference here.) 

His talk, Customer Service is the New Marketing, has important insights for how any company - startup or major corporation - promotes their product and builds loyalty from their customers. Becker made the case that the best way to market your company is through the customer experience itself. Drawing from the hospitality industry, Becker suggested that the role of a hotel concierge is the new model for meeting customer's needs. As Brian Solis aplty wrote:

Marketing-savvy corporate executives are working with PR, Advertising, and Marcom teams to explore options and strategies on how to participate in relevant online conversations. This represents a shift in outbound marketing as it creates a direct channel between companies and customers, and ultimately people. It starts to look a lot less like marketing and a lot more like customer service.

He outlines three ideas for strengthening your marketing through better customer service:

1. Put conversations at the core of your business. 

2. Reduce your sphere of control.

3. Smash the silos.

Customer Service is the New Marketing (Web2Expo)

Citing great stories of outstanding customer service from companies like Timbuk2 and Zappos among others, Becker pointed out both a necessity and opportunity for companies to participate on social networks, blogs and Twitter to provide valuable, one-on-one service with customers who more than willing to share both their good and bad experiences with others online. By giving their teams the autonomy to listen, monitor and engage customers where they are online, brands are find the most effective marketing for retaining current customers and building new ones is delivering more personal customer service.

 Conversations are at the core of business.Reduce your sphere of control.Smash silos.