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Leading Customer Engagement with Social Customer Care [Customer Relationship Management](Customer Relationship Management Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) When organizations talk about social media strategy, they often confuse the notion of social customer care with social presence. Simply maintaining active streams of informative content on social networks doesn't translate to the ability to provide social customer service. What's missing is the active follow-up and response to customers' questions and concerns. In many ways, it's the difference between owning a phone and answering it when it rings. Can you imagine what would happen to your customer satisfaction ratings if your agents only responded to a third of customer service calls? According to a study conducted by CIO magazine, 70% of the tweets sent out to brands go unanswered. That doesn't mean these brands are necessarily mishandling their social media strategy, they just may not consider social media to be a service channel - at least not yet. While this approach is fairly common among businesses looking to establish a social media presence in any form simply to remain competitive and maintain the status quo, research consistently shows, that the status quo isn't enough when customers are being surprised and delighted with a level of service that essentially raises the bar. A study conducted by New York University found that 88% of consumers are less likely to buy from those companies that ignore their complaints on Twitter. Responding to social requests - actually providing support to the social customer - has the potential to deliver measurable results. Customers who experience positive social engagement and customer care through social channels not only tend to spend 20-40% more with that brand, but the cost of social care is up to three times lower than traditional channels - and it is increasingly becoming a channel that many customers prefer when seeking answers to non-critical concerns. WHO "OWNS" SOCIAL CARE? It is not uncommon to find that many companies cede social care to their marketing teams. After all, marketing has been looking to social media as an engagement channel since social media came on the scene. And clearly, social marketing is important. But there are a number of reasons why we can't rely on marketing exclusively to manage the social care experience. If we look at what matters to marketing, we see that managing the brand at a high level is a top priority. But if marketing does intercept a request for help, is that individual aware of the proper channels to send a customer inquiry -or is more likely that customer will be forwarded and passed from contact to contact in various departments in search of assistance? Unlike contact center staff, marketing employees are not measuring their response based on service level guidelines. In fact, they may not be aware such metrics exist or recognize the importance of those metrics. LEVERAGE CONTACT CENTER BEST PRACTICES Our own research with Forrester has found that the time has come to go beyond listening and start engaging customers in two-way conversations that produce satisfying resolutions. The most effective way to do this is to integrate processes for social customer service frilly into the contact center workflow. In addition to being seen by contact center decision makers as the cornerstone of the organization's customer experience strategy, the contact center is already equipped with the know-how, the established processes, the right people, and the customer service discipline to take constructive social action and respond appropriately to customers' concerns through any channel. What many contact center systems lack in order to make this workflow a reality are tools to manage a social dialogue in the context of existing contact center strategies. Aspect Social is one solution that provides contact center agents a way to keep their social interactions in context. Rather than passively listening and monitoring social media, organizations can take action in real-time to requests for information, service and guidance that consumers regularly make in the social sphere. With the ability to track agent performance and maintain the context of social interactions, organizations can realize better value from their customers without sacrificing customer contact best practices. For more on how Aspect Social can help you turn social monologues into productive dialogues, visit www.aspect.com Customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20% to 40% more with those companies than other customers. Source: Bain & Company Report - Putting Social Media to Work (c) 2013 Information Today, Inc. |