For most businesses, IT and marketing are two separate departments with two separate goals. While most marketers are concerned with boosting their company’s revenue, most IT professionals are finding solutions for their consumer’s problems. According to Oracle’s Socially Driven Collaboration whitepaper, only 24 percent of marketers and 36 percent of IT leaders collaborate frequently. Assuming you have an in-house IT staff or you work closely with an IT outsourcing management agency, below are a few suggestions of how Marketing & IT can collaborate to improve the customer experience.
Improve Customer Experience
Make it easier for customers to get support for issues they have. Create a form on your site to be sent to a specific help e-mail. You may also encourage your customers to message issues on Facebook or Twitter, as long as the marketing team is able to respond quickly and efficiently. You can also encourage your IT team to setup a help desk or ticket support system and even a customer message board. Offering a variety of solutions for customers to keep in touch with you could help retain your current customers and have them speak positively about your customer service. Offering other options besides phone support could help boost your reputation in the long run.
View Customer Info on One Screen
Being able to view a consumer’s purchases, live chat transcripts, or any other customer information on one screen is important for eCommerce sites. If you are a customer of our service, you already have the tools you need to view customer interactions and information in one spot. You can either search for an order number in the top of your search admin or click on your open orders to check status, or change the order status. It’s easy to check users shipping and mailing addresses, orders placed and other important information all on one screen within 7cart. If your IT department is in charge of your eCommerce infrastructure, and it is not something you outsource, take these data points to them and discuss possible implementation. If you are a customer of our service, you already have several of the tools you need to view customer interactions and information in one spot.
Shift From Departments to Processes
Address issues that your customers might face in an efficient manner. According to the Harvard Business Review, a Netherlands based bank was able to resolve 80 percent of issues within two hours thanks to statistics from the marketing team to improve internal processes for problem solving.
Everyone in your office has some piece in the puzzle when it comes to a project. Create a process for communication between departments in your office and document it. Some marketers might not have disciplined project management, but it is essential when working with an IT team. Clarify the roles of each person on your team and go over goals for ROI and consumer experience, as these will be the two main areas you will need to collaborate the most on.