In business, there is no one team that is solely responsible for customer happiness. When it comes to customer engagement and support, all departments play a role in developing a positive customer experience, whether that be through direct or indirect communication. When these efforts are disjointed and misaligned, customers may feel frustrated with your company and may end up seeking solutions elsewhere.
As marketing and communications leaders, the members of Forbes Communications Council know that it takes a coordinated approach between teams to ensure consistency and quality in the customer experience. Below, they discuss 16 steps fellow marketing leaders can take to help unify departments around customer engagement and support and why it’s so critical to do.
1. Keep The Lines Of Communication Open
Communicate often! The more you understand the challenges and wins of other departments, the more readily you can craft communications that align with those specific details. A campaign devoid of collaboration simply won't work; a campaign with interdepartmental feedback and results incorporated is a campaign poised for success. - Melissa Kandel, little word studio
2. Create A Style Guide And Train Each Department On It
The No. 1 thing marketing leaders need to do is create a style guide and train every department on how to use it. The style guide provides clarity on how the company wants to sound to customers. This is critical because, without it, the customer experience feels disjointed instead of unified. Companies really struggle to scale their customer experience without this core marketing asset. - Nataly Kelly, Zappi
3. Bring Customer Success Under The Marketing Umbrella
Bringing customer success under the marketing umbrella has been transformative. It centralizes our customer intelligence, ensuring immediate access to crucial insights. This alignment doesn’t just sharpen our strategies; it ensures all departments—from sales to support—deliver a consistent, resonant customer experience. - Kurt Uhlir, Ethereal Innovations, Inc.
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4. Align Everyone Around The Bigger Vision
If you are fortunate enough to work for a purposeful company, use it to align your peers around the bigger vision. Building a sense of unity is a complicated process. Everything from technology incompatibilities to inconsistent KPIs to cross-team cultural differences can create barriers internally. However, a strategic and inclusive approach to advancing a purpose can break down walls. - Lauren Pasquale Bartlett, Ingenovis Health
5. Set Up Listening Sessions For Leadership Visibility
Silos are toxic because departments start to have their own beliefs about customer needs. Use a customer intelligence platform to share the true voice of the customer and assign members of senior leadership to top accounts. This accountability and visibility lends a centralized mindset and breaks silos. - Cynthia Sener, Chatmeter
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6. Ensure Each Team Has Access To Other Teams' Processes
Build a process knowledge base. When each team documents their own processes and makes those processes accessible to other teams, it ensures consistent use of brand messaging, which is critical to creating a consistent customer experience. - Jennifer Best, AAE Speakers Bureau
7. Get Everyone To Look At Data And Prioritize Metrics The Same Way
Operational alignment is key. Without that, you're creating more problems than you're trying to solve. A major step is to get everyone looking at data the same way, prioritizing key metrics that deliver the most value to end customers. Collaboration between marketing, sales and support teams also helps dictate common goals, role-specific responsibilities and execution, as well as define success. - Niki Hall, Five9
8. Implement A 'Customer Narrative' Framework
A marketing leader can implement a “customer narrative” framework, creating story-based scenarios that illustrate typical customer journeys and challenges. Sharing these narratives in workshops helps all departments understand the customer’s perspective, developing a unified vision and coordinated efforts to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty through consistent, supportive interactions. - Katie Jewett, UPRAISE Marketing + Public Relations
9. Be Accountable To Strategies, Tactics And Innovation
I believe marketing’s 360-degree view of strategy can contribute to how we engage customers in a well-rounded way. But, each department should always be contributing across three very simple categories: strategies, tactics and innovation. When each department is accountable to those three categories, they are always improving. - Heather Rosenow, FDH Aero
10. Champion The Regular Exchange Of Customer Insights
Foster a culture of shared customer insights across departments. Marketing leaders should champion the regular exchange of data, customer feedback and success stories between teams. This ensures a holistic view of the customer journey. When everyone is working from the same playbook, customers feel understood and valued, leading to increased loyalty and advocacy. - Patrick Ward, NanoGlobals
11. Hold Regular Cross-Departmental Meetings
A key step a communications and marketing leader can take is to set up regular cross-departmental meetings with representatives from marketing, sales, customer service and other relevant teams. These meetings should aim to align strategies, share insights and coordinate efforts, ensuring a consistent and unified approach to customer engagement and support. - Emily Burroughs, BGSF
12. Set Up An Integrated Tech Stack
Research shows people are diversifying where they turn to for customer service, with 80% using social media more now than they did a year ago. This means it’s more important than ever to unify efforts with an integrated tech stack that communicates across channels and across social, care and sales teams, enabling them to capture, take action and report on valuable customer feedback. - Scott Morris, Sprout Social
13. Oversee The Creation Of Client Communications
Marketing should oversee the creation of client communications, including marketing content, support articles, technical documentation, sales material, macros for common client support questions and more. Having marketing in this central role helps ensure a consistent voice and brand image across client touchpoints. - Tom Wozniak, OPTIZMO Technologies, LLC
14. Introduce A 'Customer Experience Exchange Program'
One impactful strategy is to introduce a "Customer Experience Exchange Program." This initiative involves rotating team members across departments such as marketing, sales and customer service. By shadowing their peers, employees gain insights into different customer touchpoints. This breaks down silos, promotes collaboration and ensures a unified approach to customer engagement. - Resha Chheda, Safe Security
15. Establish A Unified Customer Journey Map
Leverage customer-focused technology tools to establish a unified customer journey map. Visualizing the customer experience across all touchpoints helps align teams, identify gaps and ensure seamless transitions. A shared understanding of the customer journey fosters collaboration, improves efficiency and delivers a more consistent, satisfying customer experience. - Sherri Schwartz, OvationCXM
16. Create An Internal Service-Level Agreement Between Departments
Creating an internal service-level agreement between departments can be a unified customer approach. SLAs define communication, response times and escalation procedures. For example, marketing and sales align on lead timelines, and customer service establishes response expectations. SLAs ensure smooth transitions, minimize customer confusion and promote seamless collaboration and experiences. - Lauren Parr, RepuGen
