Sharing Customer Communications

I'm often asked about how to communicate with end-customers once a Marketing Partnership is formed and how to deal with certain matters. Naturally, it depends on what the matter is and how the parties have agreed to divide the 'customer communication' responsibilities, yet what I often recommend is that the party that is best capable to deal with it based on resources, knowledge and expertise is the one that should take on that responsibility.

I'll reflect on a scenario that came up recently with one of our leading clients. The partner-brand that we had 'partnered' them with had a query from one of their end-customers regarding my clients' offering. It was a complicated matter so the partner-brand brought it to our attention. Upon hearing about it, my client did one better than provide 'wording' to the partner-brand for a response to the end-customer and their query - my client advised the partner-brand that they can have the end-customer contact them directly and gave email and phone number information for a qualified individual who could respond to their questions and concerns.

When you partner with another brand, you need to know about their business and what they are doing, but when it comes to specific details that surround questions about their industry where they are the 'experts' - let the 'experts' handle it. A good practice in advance of forming the Partnership is to run through potential 'customer service related scenarios' that could arise once the partner program is fully executed and to assign responsibility and develop a flow-chart for how the parties should effectively deal with each type of example. This will ensure that there is no confusion once all is in motion.