Corporate silos — can’t live with ’em, can’t fill ’em with shredding. 🙂

I definitely think that cross-functional training is a good start to understanding how the pieces fit across departments. The performance incentives are often at cross-purposes, but at least we can start with understanding the role each piece plays in the whole.

I presented on Social Customer Service and it’s up to the marketing department to take CS under their wing and train them in all things marketing (at least a decent overview).

Funny you mention machine guns Josh… I almost used this picture for the post: http://www.windingroad.com/articles/lists/list-new-gmsegway-puma-and-other-personal-mobility-vehicles/#6

Cross-departmental communication is huge, and I think the other layer is incentives. Even if the silos communicate, the incentives are often narrowly constructed. For instance, in the case at hand, how do you measure whether marketing has set expectations effectively for downstream in the customer experience? It’s a lot easier to measure — “hey, our website traffic spiked 50% after the ad ran.”

Since you have such a focus on face-to-face sales, the principle is really the same — just more obvious than in the marketing scenario. Whatever you say during a pitch sets the expectations for later in the customer experience, right? I think “the sit” is the first step in your customer experience. Promises made need to be kept later on.

As for word of mouth… good works! 🙂

One of the big challenges businesses face is communication between departments. That is not profound nor particularly insightful but it is important. That communication is what helps/stifles good customer service.