Customer Service and Marketing Your Brand

Does your company's customer service talk with the marketing department? Maybe this isn't a new idea, I don't know. But I have had the advantage to work partially in customer service and marketing. It's nice because I get feedback on products and services that we offer and then know how to better market those products. The reason that I ask is because to me it makes sense that if you don't know what current customers think of your company, then how can you properly present the brand you want to the rest of the world?

An example: Time Warner Cable. I had a really bad experience when we started our service with them. The service technicians didn't know what they were doing or didn't do what they were supposed to and I had to for a month call customer service to back date my billing and request another technician to help set up our service. I was frustrated after the third time of calling customer service and my rep was extremely rude to me. I wanted to cancel my service because of how poorly the overall experience was. This was right around the time when Time Warner Cable was running those "We think like you do" commercials. No, you don't think like I do because if you did I would've had been treated better, gotten my service activated quicker and been satisfied knowing that I was a customer.

I guess surveys like IBM's candidate experience survey are a way to find out how people are perceiving your brand. Marketing companies are paid to do user studies as well. I wonder if talking to your customer service department would also help in determining how your brand is perceived. They know what people are having problems with, what products seem to not work as well as they should or whatever reason customers will call. They're essential.

I think being honest and able to look at the things that make our products fallible will help us know where we need to improve. Then, in turn help with future branding and marketing plans as well as new products that may be introduced.