When there are disconnects between your data sources and between your teams, customers can feel it. But when everything is seamless and they think, “Wow, that was easy,” they’re building up positive associations with your brand that can lead to higher customer satisfaction and more revenue.
Today, consumers’ expectations are higher than ever. They’re looking for:
Self service options: According to research from NICE, 81% of consumers expect more self-service options from brands.
Instant, 24/7 support: Klaviyo’s 2025 BFCM forecast found that more than half of consumers (53%) would rather get instant, 24/7 help from an AI customer service agent than email a human representative.
Responses within 24 hours: Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report found that 81% of customers expect a customer service response within 24 hours.
Customer service is marketing in action—every interaction shapes loyalty and retention, and impacts a customer’s perception of your brand. But while customer service and marketing overlap now more than ever, they’re often not as aligned as they should be.
According to Klaviyo’s 2025 state of B2C marketing report, 75% of marketers say customer service makes up more than 10% of their role, but less than one-third of marketing and customer service teams are fully aligned and integrated.
A customer relationship management platform (CRM) integrates customer service data and activities with marketing, purchases, and customer preferences, allowing brands to create better customer experiences, faster service resolution, and holistic revenue attribution.
“As B2C brands look to drive more revenue from every customer touchpoint, unifying marketing and service is becoming a clear strategic advantage,” says Roger Beharry Lall, research director at IDC. “Bringing these traditionally siloed functions together allows teams to deliver more personalized, connected experiences—and turn support interactions into opportunities for growth.”
Here’s how brands can build better relationships with their audiences using a CRM that combines marketing and customer service.
Using service data for marketing
1. Consolidate your data in one CRM that spans service and marketing
As we mentioned, marketing and service teams are often disconnected from each other. This makes customer service harder for internal teams, and less convenient for your end customer.
Let’s say someone sends a WhatsApp message outlining their issue. But when customer support reaches out, they act like it’s a brand new conversation. This puts more work on the customer to get the help they need. And without full customer context, your support team spends more time researching the customer’s history, slowing down resolution.
A B2C CRM with a built-in customer data platform and pre-built integrations pulls in real-time data from your website, marketing channels, customer service systems, rewards and loyalty programs, shipping tools, in-store POS system, and more.
Then, it stores comprehensive, real-time updates in unified customer profiles so that every team member has visibility into the latest, most up-to-date information on any given customer—whenever they need it.
Here are just a few examples of how you can use the unified data in your CRM to improve coordination between marketing and customer service:
- Keep every conversation—across web chat, email, SMS, and social—in a single inbox with the full customer story.
- Resolve customer issues faster because you don’t have to switch between tools and dashboards.
- Check recent orders, send quick responses, get notifications when customers respond, and quickly understand a customer’s history, no matter what team you’re on.
- Use enriched customer profiles to anticipate potential churn, boost repeat purchases, and tailor messages based on predicted customer lifetime value (LTV).
When jewelry brand Caitlyn Minimalist was facing fulfillment communication challenges as they were scaling with a lean team, they consolidated their tech stack in a CRM that integrated directly with Shopify and ShipStation. Now, the team can proactively reach out to customers with clear production timelines.
2. Offer a self-service customer hubUse templates instead of starting from scratch
Remember, most customers today expect self-service options. They want to be able to quickly start a return, submit a support request when an item is defective, or get quick shipping and delivery updates.
A CRM serves as the database for a self-service customer hub that’s connected to your store and product catalogs, marketing, and support. This signed-in, branded experience empowers customers to track and manage orders, get help from both human and AI agents (more on this next), create wishlists, manage subscriptions, get personalized coupons, manage loyalty rewards, and find new products.
Offering a self-serve hub has several key benefits for your business:
- Driving higher average order value (AOV) with personalized recommendations
- Reducing support ticket volume while improving customer satisfaction
- Enriching customer profiles with hub data to power more targeted segments, flows, and campaigns
Officewear brand Ministry of Supply, for example, wanted to provide customers with a more interactive self-serve experience than just showing their static order history. They set up a customer hub on top of their Shopify site that allows customers to access their recently viewed items, order history, quick repurchasing links, order tracking, personalized recommendations, and more, all while they shop.
In less than 4 months, Ministry of Supply customers performed 650+ self-serve support interactions, and the team saw fewer escalated support tickets from customers requesting basic information.
3. Launch AI-powered service agents for 24/7 support
A self-service customer hub is valuable for certain types of customers and support interactions. But sometimes customers prefer to ask live questions while they shop or after they make a purchase.
According to our BFCM forecast, when shopping online, 62% of consumers would rather have AI remember their preferences than have tore-explain them to a salesperson.
With a B2C CRM, you can connect your customers to a live AI service agent for help with:
- Common product questions
- Personalized product recommendations
- Understanding store policies
- Order tracking and shipping support
- Subscription updates and management
- Return initiation
- Help center resources
Your brand’s AI service agent learns from your online storefront, website, and customer support knowledge base, then uses that information to offer tailored, real-time responses to customer questions. It can also route customers to a human agent when they need to speak with a real person.
4. Turn service events into marketing opportunities
Customer service has the potential to generate real revenue for B2C businesses. Here are just a few ways you can use an integrated B2C CRM to tap into customer service data for marketing activations:
- Create automated flows triggered by service interactions, or vice-versa. For example, when a customer returns an item, follow up with a feedback survey or discount on their next order. When a customer leaves a negative review, notify your customer support team to reach out with a personalized response and a free item.
- Pause marketing outreach when support issues are active. Set up a rule that pauses marketing messages when customers are actively communicating with support.
- Use customer hub wishlists to understand demand and drive re-engagement. Get insights into what your customers want through wishlists and purchasing data. Once you understand customer behavior in more detail, make adjustments to generate more sales.
- Automatically remind customers to purchase items from their favorites list. Build a favorites reminder flow to turn shopper interest into revenue.
- Send proactive product education to prevent common support issues. Analyze your most common customer support inquiries about specific products, then design automated flows that send educational materials to recent purchasers.
- Up- and cross-sell during service interactions. Recommend complementary products, suggest personalized recommendations based on purchasing history, and automate post-resolution messages with relevant product suggestions.
Home fragrance brand Happy Wax is a great example of what this approach can look like in practice. When a customer leaves a review with less than 3 stars, an automated flow pings the customer service team to reach out and offer a new scent, free of charge. It’s just one way the brand uses their CRM to go above and beyond for their customers.
5. Measure customer service metrics and ROI
Once you make intentional improvements to customer service and marketing efforts, you’ll need to see how each activity and channel is influencing revenue and customer satisfaction.
Pulling from the data in your CRM, create shared dashboards and reports for marketing and service teams to track:
- Revenue impact: Look at reduced churn rates through proactive support, and higher LTV associated with increased customer satisfaction.
- Operational efficiency improvements: Monitor reduced support ticket volume through self-service, faster resolution times, first response time, and lower cost per resolution with AI service agents.
- Customer experience and satisfaction: Analyze net promoter scores (NPS) or customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores after implementing customer service improvements.
Then, make data-driven improvements to continue to increase customer satisfaction, like using order tracking data to send proactive notifications with estimated delivery updates when there will be delays, or using LTV data to automatically route high-value customers to support agents.
Turn customer service into a revenue driver with Klaviyo B2C CRM
Customers want shopping with your brand to feel simple and hassle-free, and shopping today extends beyond the “Complete your purchase” button. With unified support and marketing in a single AI-powered platform, you can turn customer data into personalized experiences that wow your audiences during every interaction.
K:Service, the customer service solution built into Klaviyo B2C CRM, has everything you need to deliver the experience customers expect:
- All-in-one self-serve portal: Give customers a personalized, signed-in experience in your online store where they can manage orders, get help, and find products they’ll love.
- 24/7 support: Use an AI agent to help shoppers pick the right product, get quick answers, and solve problems—automatically, and all powered by your data.
- Unified inbox: Empower your team with a single view of customer conversations across channels, including SMS, web chat, social, and email.
Get ahead of your competitors and become your customers’ favorite brand with Klaviyo.
| Ready to transform your customer relationships? Take our B2C CRM readiness assessment to discover your next steps. [Take the quiz] | How to build exceptional customer experiences The ultimate benefit of a CRM is the customer experiences you can create. [Learn how] | How to improve your customer experience for higher CLV A better customer experience should equate to more lifetime value. [Learn more] |