Hadijah Creary, Senior Product Marketing Manager at PagerDuty takes the time to chat about the importance of creating an all encompassing customer service experience in B2B in this short Q&A:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Hadijah, tell us about yourself and more about your role at PagerDuty…

My name is Hadijah Creary and I’m a product marketing manager here at PagerDuty, working on our customer service product offerings. At PagerDuty, one of our internal core values is “Champion the Customer,” and we want our customers to be able to do the same. A large part of my role is highlighting the various customer service operations (CSOps) products and features we offer that can help our customers delight their customers.

How do you see customer service norms changing in today’s B2B product and service lifecycle?

At the moment, we are in a digital-first world. That’s the “new” norm. We spend more and more time online, and our expectations of perfect customer experience have never been higher. Research shows that a  customer is four times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service related rather than price or product related. What’s more, their experience with customer service can make or break their relationship with the brand, and then they will spread the word. Now more than ever, companies have to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences in every aspect of their business, from the level of service to how well products work to keep their customers happy and keep them coming back.

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Can you talk about what sales-marketing teams need to do to integrate this experience more?

First and foremost, businesses need to realize how integral customer service teams are to delivering a great product and exceptional customer experience. Customer service teams are uniquely positioned to serve as continuous feedback loops from customers, and those insights can help both development teams in charge of delivering products/services and sales/marketing teams in charge of getting those products and services in-hand. What’s more, customer service teams also act as a messenger, bringing status updates from development teams directly to the business’s customers.

To harness this power, it’s imperative to equip customer service teams with tools that enable them to communicate easily and quickly with development, sales/marketing, and customers. It’s this idea of immediate and facile communication that led us to introduce PagerDuty Status Pages.

Can you elaborate (from your observations) on some of the leading customer service tactics/processes you’ve come across and what key learnings marketers and salespeople as well as business leaders can grab from it?

A leading tactic we’ve seen in customer service is looking at customers as “signals” for if a product or service is performing well or poorly. Marketers and salespeople should certainly take note, because these same customers can serve as signals for if a campaign or sales tactic is landing well. This further reinforces the importance of direct, immediate, and easy communication between customer service, development, and sales/marketing teams. Marketers and salespeople must communicate frequently with customer service teams to gather feedback and pivot their strategies accordingly. For example, a sales or marketing department may be hyper focused on selling one product or feature, but if an entirely other one is resonating more with customers, customer service teams can deliver that feedback and change not only the strategy of sales/marketing, but the outcomes.

For brands/teams thinking of rebuilding their customer service strategy in 2023: what top tips would you share?

• Give your agents the tools they need and don’t keep them siloed off from the rest of the organization as they all need to work together.
• Connect all your teams–customer service agents and DevOps engineering–in the same tool to save your company money and time.
• Remember that customers are a key signal in providing insights into problems that the engineering teams aren’t aware of. Your customer service teams can also be used to create visibility for engineering and other parts of your organization.
• Keep agents and teams happy and informed to ensure your customers are always happy.

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What do you feel about the future of the B2B marketing industry and the influence of customer service?

The future of B2B marketing will see customers and their experience become active participants in marketing strategies, as opposed to passive recipients.

We’ve seen customers’ expectations of service change drastically over the last few years, and we’re likely to see this trend carry into marketing. Customers increasingly want immediate and open communication, and bespoke solutions that address their unique needs. Blanket, sales-focused marketing strategies will no longer suffice. B2B marketers have to view marketing as part of the customer experience, identify which issues they’re trying to solve for their customers, and work backwards from there with a solutions-oriented mindset.