It seems from Steve O’Hear’s  “Is Anyone Out There?” article posted on TechCrunch last week, that yes a lot of companies now know about the importance of social media and everyone understands that using social media to engage with audiences is beneficial. The article notes that “90% of UK tech companies featured had a presence on two or more social networks”, but of all these brands on Twitter, “43% of brands had never replied to a single tweet”.

What’s keeping all these companies from optimising their Twitter and Facebook initiatives? The new expectation of customer service is that within a few hours of complaining online, someone perky and powerful from the company will respond, and offer to solve your problem. I am actually impressed that a lot of companies are doing this, and I have had a few personal examples. I was delighted the first few times my queries or concerns were addressed on Twitter (within a few hours), and was very satisfied that the companies were listening my concerns. Moving forward, these few companies have raised the bar for customer service, and for anyone who has filed a complaint on Twitter, this is now the standard.

The author noted that many companies are responding to complaints on Twitter, but are not actually following through with fixing customer complaints and concerns. It seems as though the team charged with responding to social queries have no power, although in many cases customers will feel satisfied that their concerns were simply acknowledged.

That the team of interns charged with responding to social queries actually have no power, although in the end customers may feel better about their experience and about the brand, simply because someone was listening.

Why are companies not responding to follower’s tweets, as the article suggests? There are two reasons. Firstly, no one has time to log on to the Twitter account, and the social engagement queries are not deemed priorities. Secondly, the benefits of engaging with audiences in social media are not fully understood. Yes, Twitter is a useful means of sending targeted messages to an engaged audience in a one-way stream. Twitter is also useful in gaining sales leads, networking and engaging with customers. If someone called your office with inquiries about your business, would someone return their call? Yes. Is there a difference?

Have you ever had any experiences with customer service in social networks? I once read that in terms of customer satisfaction from hotel stays, if the customer or client has a bad experience and the hotel goes above and beyond to correct the problem, that the customer is more likely to book and stay at that hotel again than if there hadn’t been an issue in the first place. Will the same be true for complaints vented in social cyberspace?

 Let’s face it, sales and marketing departments are two sides of the same coin – they’re both put in place by businesses to essentially create more awareness, build relationships and boost revenues.

So what’s unquestionably puzzling in this current economic downturn is the question on every marketer’s lips – why aren’t these two teams talking to each other? What has led to this breakdown of communication and what can be done to solve it?

Well, let’s look at this logically and go back to basics. You wouldn’t expect a relay team to rely on one person to win a race, so why rely on a single area of your company to sell your product or service?

Of course, sales and marketing positions have independent roles – yet, they’re each striving towards the same goal. A sales department cannot afford to spend their time getting to know their customers inside out, just as marketers shy away from one-on-one meetings.

Indeed, the problem is not the two departments individual operations, yet the fact that they’re not melding their skills into a double act that could potentially see their business grow with twice the power and dominance at a time of shaky financial stability.

The irony is that the technique businesses need to focus on during a recession is precisely the one that most sales and marketing departments are weakest at – lead generation. In order for this dark art to deliver results, both divisions must pull together seamlessly.

So how do you send this sinking ship back afloat? Well, primarily there needs to be little, or if possible, no slashes through marketing budgets – whatsoever – not even a nip.

Consistency must make up the base of this business model – continuing to push your product, service and brand boldly, whilst retaining the highest level of contact between sales and marketing departments.

Once the communication barrier has been battered and the team is functioning productively as a whole, you’ll start to review the results and realise that those non-existent networks of communication between the sales and marketing departments have actually been detrimental to company performance and crucially affected customer commitment and loyalty.

Yet it’ll all be a learning curve to look back on, since your sales and marketing team is now a united force – with more insight, focus and passion than ever, and equally more capable of delivering effective lead generation campaigns in today’s wavering economic climate.