I usually attend and speak at Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Ecommerce Conferences, at Retail events, or at general leadership sessions. So a few months back when I was asked to speak at SOCAP, my first reaction was ‘what’s that?’ Well, I quickly learned that SOCAP International (The Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business) is the organization for Customer Care professionals. SOCAP was established in 1973 to help shape the business community’s response to changing consumer needs and expectations.
So why did a Customer Care organization want to hear from a marketer like me? Well, I’ll get to that in a moment. But Lisa Oswald, Senior Vice President, Global Customer Care at TravelZoo, who also happens to sit on the Board of Director at SOCAP, heard me speak at the ForeSee Summit in April 2016. Soon after, she connected me with Marjorie Bynum, who is SOCAP’s Vice President if Strategic Learning, Leadership, and Communications.
When Marjorie and I spoke for the first time, we instantly hit it off, as we shared a passion to help our respective industries learn and improve. She then asked if I would be interested in keynoting the afternoon session on Day 1 of the SOCAP Conference. I was thrilled to do so.
How Digital Transformation Lessons Can Help Customer Care
We quickly realized that my story about Digital Transformation, shifting culture and perception, educating from the top down, and talking about some challenges we went through, would be a great story for the attendees to hear.
SOCAP’s theme for this year’s conference, held in San Diego from October 22-25, was about Moving at the Speed of Innovation. Marjorie and I also recorded a podcast together, which centered on Innovation (which I have strong feelings on what that means; see my blog post, The Great Divide, for more on that). Marjorie dove deep into innovation, and what that term and thought process means to me, for Mark’s, for Retail, and also spoke about what that means for leaders.
You can listen to the podcast here:
Here are the rest of the podcasts from the SOCAP Innovation Series.
The keynote session was moderated by Tom Asher, Vice President of Customer Engagement at Humach. Tom is such a personable, genuine gentlemen. He is well respected in the industry, and did a fantastic job, as did my co-keynote session speaker, Jay Kershner, Vice President of Customer Support at FitBit, perhaps the most customer centric organization out there. Tom knows how to work a crowd (he ran onto the stage and circled around for about 30 seconds to get the crowd going) and also know how to bring some levity into a session. At the end of both our talks, and before the Q&A, Tom wanted to do something memorable. He knew I was a huge hockey fan (go New Jersey Devils!) and that Jay wore shorts to work 300 days a year (I would too if I worked in San Francisco). So after the sessions, Jay and I walked back on stage in Devils jerseys, and Jay also came back with shorts on. It symbolized the fact that we often have to disrupt things, and do things a little differently to be innovative, to be noticed. It was a fantastic moment.
What Does a Marketer Know About Customer Service?
So back to that question: why did a Customer Care organization want to hear from a Marketer? Because what we’re doing at Mark’s, taking it from a traditional retailer, and quickly adapting it to change in the digital age, is monumental. We’ve made mistakes along the way, but we’ve also made some great strides. And the story of what we did, how we did it, and how we fixed the mistakes we made can be taken and used in every Customer Care professional’s day-to-day job. And as I thought about it more, every minor and major thing we do, every program we launch, every technology we implement, it’s all for the customer, the same customer that the people on the front lines (Customer Service) deal with on a daily basis.
How SOCAP Changed Me
Sitting with the attendees at the conference, I soon realized that every thought they have is on the customer. How can we improve their experience? How can we remove roadblocks for them? How can we make service more seamless? How can technology help us do so? As a Marketer, I’d love to believe that was the case for our industry – that we always think of the customer first. Well, it’s not always the case. I know on the flight home, I thought of that a lot – how can I put the customer first? How can we make online shopping easier for them (not easier for us as a Marketing team)? How can we make it easier to rectify their problem or issue on first contact? How can we have a better Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page? A better returns policy? And on and on. This conference may have helped me more than the story I told helped the attendees. And for that, I am grateful to the SOCAP team for having me.
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