It has been inevitable: the place where contact centers and social media meet is today being called “social CRM” (customer relationship management). It's also often the place where mobile customer care comes in.
Contact center companies are ignoring the customer powerhouses that are social media and mobile customer care at their peril. Smart companies have brought social media and mobility into the contact center multichannel mix. The methods for doing so, however, are varied and have seen mixed results. Contact center solutions providers are still forging early paths for these technologies, and they are as varied as the contact center solutions companies that build them.
One particularly interesting social media channel comes from customer service solutions provider Hold-Free Networks, which earlier this year introduced a module called “The Social Sentiment.” This technology allows consumers on smartphones to submit feedback on the customer service experience they've just had immediately after interacting with a call center agent or an automated system, right on the same smartphone they used during the interaction. That feedback can then be published to social networks or routed directly to the enterprise for action. Customer participation in the survey is entirely optional.
The Social Sentiment module also includes an engagement console that lets agents view comments and generate responses while remaining apprised of service level thresholds, context surrounding individual comments, and overall trends affecting the enterprise. The company can essentially build and control what the customer sees, what gets posted to public sites, and what gets sent to the company.
The Social Sentiment feature is available in a software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) model and has initially been rolled out as a stand-alone product. The company expects that it will be rolled into a larger suite of offerings later on, according to Joe Katz, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Hold Free Networks. Companies can have it appear as a pop-up after the interaction or as a standard feature within their smartphone apps.
To find out more about Hold-Free Networks visit the company at ITEXPO West 2012. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premiere communications and technology event. Visit Hold-Free in booth # 519. For more information on ITEXPO West 2012 click here.
Edited by Stefanie Mosca