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Monitoring Social Media for the Voice of the Customer Critical for the Hosted Call Center

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

The market in which we operate today is very different from the one in place just five years ago. While social media had already made its arrival, it didn’t yet play the significant role in business that it does today. Now, a company operating a hosted call center must also have integration with its social media channels if it hopes to control the message and effectively interact with customers.

A recent inContact blog examined the current phenomenon, exploring the opportunities and challenges that can exist with social media monitoring. The writer referred to a good friend responsible for the social media monitoring for his company and how his actions helped to capture the voice of the customer.

This particular professional reported that one of his company’s locations experienced an incident over the holidays that caused a significant stir in social media platforms. More than 1000 tweets, Facebook (News - Alert) posts and more were generated by customers, their friends and others. The company addressed the issue, one they had never before encountered, to the best of their ability at the time.

With the issue at rest, there was still an important opportunity to examine the voice of the customer through the more than 1000 posts online. An analysis of the posts demonstrated a mixed response from customers: some agreed with the company, while others agreed with the customer’s issue.

While you may be wondering about the issue itself, that point is irrelevant. What is important is how the company captured and managed the voice of the customer. It is not enough to simply listen to their voice, you have to do something with the information provided. The company in question here is still working to decipher whether or not they took the correct action.

In the process, having feedback from customers that represented both pros and cons has helped the company to put a procedure in place to hopefully prevent another social media frenzy on the same issue in the future. With a focus on social media monitoring, this company is in a unique position to truly capture the voice of the customer and turn it into valuable intelligence.

The same can be true for any company with a hosted call center approach to customer care. With interactions already supported online, a clean integration with social media channels is a logical move, and one that can pay off in the long run. After all, it’s one thing to listen to a frustrated customer on the phone; it’s a whole new ballgame when customers can start a frenzy of negative comments for the world to see on Twitter (News - Alert) and Facebook.

What is your voice of the customer strategy and are you monitoring your social media as well as your hosted call center interactions? If not, you’re missing a significant opportunity.