Adele’s “Hello” Lyrics Suggest Marketing and Client Success Alignment

Marketing and Client Success

(Photo: http://bravonet.ro/blog/adele-8-lucruri-pe-care-trebuie-sa-le-stii-despre-artista/2015/11/20/)

Five days. That’s all it took for Adele’s new song, “Hello” to hit 100 million views two weeks ago. To no surprise, the video even set a record for the most views within 24 hours — beating out Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” music video. So you may be wondering what this has to do with marketing and client success (CS) alignment. Well, the song was written to shed light on why the two departments should touch base and get back together (others may argue that it’s about an old fling, but all you can really do is read on and decide for yourself).

1.) “Hello, it’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet to go over everything…”

It’s the very first line of the song; Adele is being pretty straightforward. She thinks marketing and CS have been out of touch and it’s time to determine where to go from here. I will elaborate for her — have you touched base on new customers that are going through the onboarding process? At this point, you want to lay the foundation for satisfied clients through actions such as email marketing campaigns. These campaigns should provide relevant content and information that new customers need to be successful. Smooth sailing during the onboarding process ensures customer satisfaction and a higher chance that those individuals will metamorphosis into brand advocates. As Adele states, “They say that time’s supposed to heal ya, but I ain’t done much healing.” You do NOT want a bad experience to leave customers thinking or saying that.

2.) “It’s so typical of me to talk about myself, I’m sorry. I hope that you’re well. Did you ever make it out of that town where nothing ever happened?”

At this point, Adele is painting a picture of a conference room where marketing realizes they may have gone a little heavy on self promotion of the company. Marketing then poses the question to CS as to whether or not anything happened with acquiring content from loyal customers in order to create case studies. Reading deeper into the lyrics, if marketing and CS can work hand-in-hand, your customers can do all the talking for you. Potential case studies, testimonials, customer referrals, and ideas for content topics are all things CS has insight into and can pass along to marketing.

3.) “It’s no secret that both of us are running out of time.”

Adele is making a point that there should be a sense of urgency here. Failure to attain unity between CS and marketing can result in departing customers — business that could have been saved if communication between the two departments had existed. Ultimately, CS is the window to the customer that marketing needs. Asking clients to participate in surveys that generate feedback, for example, is worth the time if it means improving the customer experience (it’s exactly why Adele then sings: “Hello from the outside at least I can say that I tried”). CS is aware of the issues clients face, and marketing can nurture those relationships in a way that addresses those problems.

While some artists are merely singing about love, Adele has higher hopes of aligning the marketing and client success departments of the world. Disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. If you haven’t heard the song, be sure to check it out, but first see how burrito combinations also relate to the unification of marketing and client success departments.