{"id":2946,"date":"2011-04-28T12:29:16","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T12:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2011-04-28T12:29:16","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T12:29:16","slug":"face-to-face-customer-service-still-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/face-to-face-customer-service-still-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Face-to-face Customer Service Still Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I recently wrote about<\/a> the dangers of disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel \u2026 and the importance of INTEGRATING your brand messages across all channels.<\/p>\n

We also need to make sure that we integrate our brand messages across<\/strong> <\/strong>platforms \u2013<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>both face-to-face and online.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Real-life example:\u00a0 I have been involved with my bank for years \u2013 I\u2019m an Advocate, and I go to this bank all the time.\u00a0 This week after visiting my bank in their physical location, I walked out realizing that more often than not, I leave their \u201cstore\u201d\u00a0not<\/em> feeling good.<\/p>\n

This bank is giving me a huge mixed message: they have branches on almost every corner so they obviously value the face-to-face customer experience\u2026 but when they get me in front of them, with the best opportunity to make me feel good, they drop the ball.\u00a0 Their online presence promises a high-touch, personalized, efficient experience but the actual face-to-face experience is highly disappointing with long slow lines and employees standing around not doing anything while I wait.\u00a0 It\u2019s not quick, it\u2019s not efficient, and it\u2019s nothing like what they promised in their online and traditional messaging.<\/p>\n

I expect by now you are building valuable relationships with your customers online, then identifying, mobilizing, and energizing Brand Advocates<\/a> and tracking their reach.\u00a0 That is great and important, but what about the real world?\u00a0 That is an INCREDIBLE chance to build and enhance advocacy\u2026 or unfortunately, to break it down!<\/p>\n

Banks are not the only businesses guilty of dropping the ball with their face-to-face customer experience.\u00a0 It happens at car dealerships, home improvement warehouses, and a variety of other businesses where you walk into the location and a handful of reps are talking among themselves happily ignoring you or simply not being \u201cnice\u201d when they do finally pay attention\u2026 no \u201chow can I be of service?,\u201d no smiles, and negative body language.\u00a0 There is no \u201ccustomer\u201d or \u201cservice\u201d in that scenario, and the powerful message sent is \u201cyou don\u2019t matter to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

You need to make sure that when focusing on the online customer experience, that your face-to-face customer experience carries the ball, and actually advances it\u2026 DO NOT waste that valuable opportunity!\u00a0\u00a0 Unite your brand messages by taking the online experience to the real world and vice versa.\u00a0\u00a0 Brand Advocates exist in both venues \u2013 make sure your best\u00a0customer service<\/a> is always in both venues to meet them.<\/p>\n

Ted Rubin<\/p>\n

Originally posted at\u00a0ZuberRants<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote about the dangers of disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel \u2026 and the importance of INTEGRATING your brand messages across all channels. We also need to make sure that we integrate our brand messages across platforms \u2013 both face-to-face and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[928,854,1226,32,1225,30,1195,1029,897,3],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-brand-advocate","tag-customer-experience","tag-face-to-face-customer-service","tag-marketing","tag-online-customer-service","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-channel","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-social-media-strategy","tag-ted-rubin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2950,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/2950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}