I had an unusual situation happen. I have customers in central Kentucky who were called in to repair a hole in a stone wall that opened up along a roadside. If you know anything about the geography of that part of the country, it is filled with underground caves and it is not unusual for a sinkhole to develop. In this case, a rock formation along the highway suddenly collapsed one day and, as one of the guys who had walked inside the hole witnessed, it led to a drop-off that was so deep, he could not see the bottom. He tossed a rock into it to listen for it to hit the floor of the cave. He never heard a sound!

What is the great abyss in business that is causing customers to stop buying specific brands? It is poor customer service. I would venture to say that poor customer service is so widespread that it would be nearly impossible to find anyone who has not been put on hold for a very long time waiting to speak to someone who can fix their problem, or worked through an AI chatroom with a non-human who keeps redirecting you to FAQ articles that do not pertain to your problem, or run into the aloof customer service employee who reads scripts to you but does not really listen to your problem or has the authority to fix it. Do you know what that is to your customers? It is a bottomless pit – the abyss from which brands are tossed and are never heard from again.

What does this have to do with marketing? Marketing is a very broad discipline in business. In today’s business environment, it is hard to find an area of the company that marketing does not touch. Why so? Because marketing is tasked with the positive promotion of your brand. Every aspect of business either promotes an affirmative or negative image of your company’s brand. It is also true that running a business is much more transparent than it used to be. The social media world has made it possible to rate just about anything, including (or should I say "especially”) a bad experience with a company. If one customer has an incident with one of your employees or your products, they will shout it from the top of the social media mountain!

What can you do to help your brand from falling over the precipice into the great customer service abyss? First, promote your wins. That will require you to get involved with customers after the sale to see how they like your brand. It takes numerous positives to turn around a negative, but it can be done. Remember that people are social creatures and most people like to sound like the rest of the crowd. So if you can push your wins as part of your marketing, you will find that people begin to have a much more favorable feeling about your brand. Second, fix the problems quickly and get the word out that you have done so. Every business has rough places, it is the business that makes it right for the customer that gets the added bonus of a customer-first reputation. That is very marketable because it takes the risk out of the hands of the customer and puts it on the company.

Don’t let poor customer service toss your brand into the bottomless pit! Fix problems and make that part of your marketing message.