See also:  The Main Features of SharePoint 2013 and How to Implement Them Successfully

Collaboration and social computing techniques have been playing a large role in helping companies compete in a tough market, especially when it comes to customer service. Today, there are many tools in SharePoint 2013 that make social campaigns more efficient with less effort so that every customer can be catered to individually in real time. Social capabilities for business users provide an invaluable way for one business to differentiate itself from others, discover targeted and fast ways to spread quality information, use expert knowledge, follow industry news and keep connected.

How to work with more sophisticated customers

When new customers come through the door, and a sales person is dealing with them, everyone knows they may be shopping for a product or service with three other companies simultaneously. People want the best quality for the best price, so they will do their research and ask for quotes in a few places. The faster and more accurate the sales person’s answers, the better chance of getting and retaining those customers.

In order to keep a customer, sales often needs access to a breadth of information to answer the following questions:

• Do we have specialists to work with the technology the customer is using?
• What expertise do we have with similar projects?
• Who was working on those projects?
• Are they available for a quick consultation?
• Is there a case study, project description and/or customer testimonial we can attach to the conversation?

The only way to answer all these questions within hours is to use social tools that connect an enterprise into one community. SharePoint 2013 is a great tool to keep the business connected; experts in different areas are available to provide relevant content to the right users while minimizing information overload. It’s like a social network but better; there is no wasting time on irrelevant information, so communication takes place on a quality level – also powered by excellent search possibilities to speed up business-customer interactions.

Social to replace enterprise communications?

Mundane work in any company presupposes writing emails, chatting in Skype (News - Alert), looking for documents in CRM, using team sites, etc. All of this work can be transferred to SharePoint, and the process has already begun. Social networking is slowly replacing email; in fact, in 2014, around 20 percent of enterprise users turned to social features as a primary source of communication. So let us look at the advantages of using SharePoint 2013 for better customer service:

1. Sharing information in a quality way. Everyone knows that information is the greatest asset, but it is only valuable in business if you have access to the right information at the right time. In SharePoint, data is targeted towards groups of users, so time is saved and data is available in seconds.
2. Centralized and organized document storage. SharePoint helps organize documents according to expertise areas, industries and projects.
3. Better collaboration. SharePoint helps ease collaboration between different departments in an organization through features like Outlook calendar synchronization, for instance.
4. Easy, fast and powerful search possibilities. SharePoint makes it easier to search for information so that customer needs are met in the most efficient way possible.
5. Always updated, always connected. By following a tag (News - Alert), users stay automatically updated on a topic relevant to them and their current customers.
6. Stress-free data management. Data in SharePoint can be easily connected to a certain activity (a project, for example), which provides a focused way to manage data and concentrate all efforts on an activity.
7. Easy to trace documents. SharePoint users can follow documents and are informed of any changes or updates to it.
8. Good security. Security is highly important for enterprise users, and SharePoint has amazing features to manage access rights. Only relevant people have access to projects to ensure no damage can be done.
9. Viral expert advice through microblogging. Through blogging tips, news bits and advice, experts in different areas can exchange ideas and make sure the whole organization has a finger on the pulse of things, and no one is keeping the organization from lagging behind.
10. Game element for higher motivation. SharePoint allows users to gain achievements, which may enhance motivation and help promote healthy competition within the company.

Choosing the right social strategy in the modern business world is not enough to have a tangible impact, let alone stand out from thousands of other enterprises. Automating the chosen strategy and making social efforts as effective and time-efficient as possible is the only method to become flexible enough and mold one’s tactics in accordance with the changing circumstances. 

About the Author: Sergey Protchenko is a senior developer with Itransition. His professional area of interest is in MS SharePoint, and he was certified as a Microsoft (News - Alert) Certified Technology Specialist in SharePoint 2010. He also works with ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC and MS SQL Server 2005/2008. Currently, he works on creating apps with the help of such libraries and tools as EXT JS, Telerik RAD Controls for ASP.NET Ajax, jQuery, Aspose, BCL.easyConverter, Open XML, HtmlAgilityPack, log4net, NHibernate, Entity Framework, MigratorDotNet, Quartz.NET, Unity, Camlex.NET and The SharePoint Guidance Library. Sergey graduated from Belarusian State University of Informatics (News - Alert) and Radioelectronics with a specialty in Computers and Networks.