A theme that’s popping up more and more with word of mouth marketers is the strategy of using customer service as the new marketing. Zappos has built its business around a customer service culture. Comcast has focused on customer service to help repair its brand image. And, Best Buy uses customer service as a differentiator.

At WOMMA’s recent School of WOM conference nearly every presentation from the keynotes to the breakout sessions touched up customer service as a way to make a brand more talkable.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Dana Mattioli writes about how “some executives see a chance to woo frustrated customers from rivals through word of mouth and by creating pleasant experiences.”

Mattioli details how Comcast is improving its customer service, resulting in satisfied customers, higher sales, and no doubt … more positive word of mouth.

“Cable provider Comcast is bolstering customer service operations in an effort to retain customers and sell higher-priced services. The company has been trying to improve customer service for the past couple of years, but it’s still a sore spot: earlier this year The Consumerist, a consumer issues website, granted Comcast its “Worst Company in America” award.

In January, Comcast started putting its 24,000 call-center agents through additional training and has told call-center supervisors to spend 70% of their time coaching their agents, more than double the amount of time they spent before. So far, Comcast says it’s seen a decrease in repeat customer calls—queries about the same problem—and in customer requests to speak to a supervisor.

‘Our primary focus has been on ensuring that we’re delivering superior customer service and that clears the way for us to be able to up-sell,’ says Tina Waters, senior vice president of customer operations at Comcast.”

[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal article | June 7, 2010]