We tend to think of customer service as a one-on-one conversation. Sure, there’s an audience on social media, but it’s not something we tend to consider by default. Even for experienced professionals, it’s easy to default to chatting one on one. 

Every conversation, every interaction, really has three audiences: 

• The customer you’re talking to. 

• The people who already know your brand. 

• Complete strangers discovering you through the interaction. 

The first we’ll leave for another article, or about 900 of them already across the internet. Let’s dig into the other two. 

There are people who already know your brand from some other interaction. They might be repeat customers, or someone who’s simply seen you around before. They’re going to form an opinion based on how they see this interaction play out. What’s interesting is that people form opinions about problems they’ve never even had themselves. 

Empathy is natural. 

Most of us naturally imagine ourselves in other people’s situations. When we watch someone have a great experience – or a poor one – we can’t help but ask, “How would they treat me?” 

Most of your customers will never need to return a product. They’ll never have a billing issue, require emergency support, or find an unexpected spider or lizard in the box. But when those edge cases happen, everyone watching is quietly deciding how they think your organisation would treat them if it happened to them. 

Then there are the strangers. This is the big one. 

Most brands know the lifetime value of a customer. There’s a spreadsheet somewhere that can tell you exactly what someone is worth after they walk through the door. What you can never know is when they’re standing on the threshold.  

It’s endless first impressions.

Every public interaction is a first impression for someone. Every conversation is another opportunity for someone to discover your organisation with either its best foot forward… or its worst. 

The goal isn’t to win every interaction perfectly. It’s to recognise that every public interaction teaches someone else what it’s like to deal with your organisation. Having clear processes around tone, escalation and risk helps make sure those moments consistently reflect the organisation you want people to discover. 

You’re not just replying to one customer. You’re introducing your brand to hundreds of future ones.