One thing the world has today is lots of social media channels, and customers are increasingly using them to interact with companies. Social media allows companies to hear, engage and participate in customer conversations not only during a call, but even when the customer discusses his or her product/service experience with friends or peers on social networks.

The Asia Pacific region has a breadth of call centers. Since many businesses realize that it’s critical that they ensure social media merges with the contact center so it can become part of the unified customer experience, call centers of Asia are getting into social media in a big way.

A new report from analyst group Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), called “Social Media in Customer Care - Asia-Pacific View,” has found that contact centers need to thoroughly assess the customer base, existing customer contact processes, and then analyze the need to build a new set of processes and programs to complement the existing ones.

Asia Pacific's rising profile in the social media arena is evident from its occupying seven positions in the list of top 30 countries with the most number of Facebook (News - Alert) users.

Therefore, having a social media customer engagement strategy will no longer be an option in 2012-2013, according to the analyst group.

"However, adopting the social media requires greater responsiveness on part of the enterprise," Frost & Sullivan Industry Manager Krishna Baidya said in a statement. "Once a social channel for customer interaction is established, quick response and frequent updates are critical to sustain the channel. Such interactions also need to be seamless across different channels; therefore, a siloed approach to implementation is likely to fail.”

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Austin 2012, happening now in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.