Today’s guest post is written by Beth Kribs-LaPierre.

In 2007, Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent wrote a blog post titled “Customer Service is the New Marketing.”

In her post, she suggested interruption marketing is broken and that we are still figuring out how to do the permission part.

Well, it’s five years later and I’m afraid we’re still working on it.

Customer service represents the single greatest branding opportunity for any organization or business.

Bad customer service represents the single greatest risk to today’s brands.

Think about it. Name one other time a known customer comes knocking on your door/website/Facebook page. You might say “when they opt-in to my email” or “when they ‘like’ me on Facebook”.

WRONG. (more…)