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Fitting Together the Call Center and Social Networking Puzzle Pieces

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

You, as a call center manager or director, may be aware of the popular explosion of social media among your customers, but have you ever wondered what implications it has for the call center's business and operations?

Sure, you use it yourself and post photos of your kids or keep in touch with old friends. But is there relevance for your business there? You suspect there might be... how can something so huge and pervasive not have an effect on your business?

Recent studies by ComScore show that Internet surfers spend more time on Facebook (News - Alert) than any other destination on the Internet. In fact, many of your customers are spending nearly 10 percent of their time online on Facebook and even more time on other sites such as LinkedIn or MySpace (News - Alert), or newer social networking sites like Apple's iTunes Ping.

Delta Airlines recently launched a ticket purchasing portal actually within Facebook itself, to allow friends traveling together to research, plan and book their trip entirely within the confines of the Facebook site.

So how can social networking not be affecting your customers' buying habits and their views as customers?

The answer is: it can't. It is affecting how your customers interact with you, and not getting a comprehensive grip on this will be to the detriment of your call center organization and possibly your sales and service.

Many companies have formed pages on social media sites: a “fan” page on Facebook, for example, that allows people who like the company's products or services to keep in touch with company news, and some companies run contests or promotions via their Facebook pages. By and large, though, beyond checking out what's there on the first visit, most customers find the company Facebook page a one-way street. They may post comments or photos of themselves using the product, but they don't hear much in return.

Wrote Tim Harris, director of professional services for hosted call center solutions provider inContact on his blog, “When I see a company that is communicating online, I expect (and hope) that I will be able to contact that company via social media. I am also seeing that adoption of this trend is often hidden from the call center (mostly because I can rarely engage the companies through social media). My thought is that the teams that are chartered with handling the customer communication are not involved in this endeavor, but we’ve got to get involved!”

Of course, it's going to be a daunting task. But there is help available from organizations that have walked the path already. inContact has begun a series of articles to help call centers better understand the implications of social media and the methods to help the call center use social media outlets to improve call center operations. From the first step, call centers becoming aware of social media, to the final goal, which is to leverage these channels and become “the nerve center” within the organization as a whole for monitoring and using social media as a complement to better understanding customers, inContact realizes that most organizations will need guidance on their journey. Part One of the series, written by inContact's Bassam Salem, can be viewed by clicking here.