ICSC Core - Customer Service and Public Relations

PROJECT SUMMARY – CORE/SERVICE The Customer Service and PR/Marketing personnel are often the first point of contact and serve as MMRRC ambassadors to cultivate a collaborative community of scientific investigators working with mouse models. Through web-based interaction and various face to face activities, Customer Service and PR/Marketing personnel strive to make all touchpoints with the MMRRC easy, accessible, dependable and resourceful. These touchpoints involve donating investigators and their staff, repeat customers seeking to order products or services, inquiries from the four MMRRC Centers, fielding questions from prospective users, as well as educating those at conferences who have no prior knowledge of the MMRRC. As such, the ICSC will provide and maintain a free public website that offers a current state-of-the-art catalog of mutant mice and valuable outside research resources links. The website allows investigators to easily search for strains of interest or learn how to donate a strain. Having a thorough knowledge of all repository content and related services, Customer Service personnel will function as concierges, providing the option of guiding donating investigators through the submission process and customers through the ordering and service options. The ICSC will conduct PR/Marketing-focused outreach activities to raise awareness of the MMRRC as a valuable research resource and to increase repository donations. Marketing and outreach activities will include targeted broadcasting of MMRRC holdings and services to the international biomedical research community through monthly email push campaigns, hosting an education/information booth at scientific conferences, producing marketing informational materials to promote the value and services offered through the MMRRC, securing research service listings in journal buyers guides, collaborating with other NIH supported initiatives to leverage branding efforts, supporting other NIH sponsored efforts (e.g. RRIDs), and engaging within the scientific community via social media channels. The ICSC Customer Service and PR/Marketing core will also provide mechanisms that solicit regular feedback from donors and requestors, along with analyzing and summarizing findings to present to the MMRRC consortium.