Social Media

Social media is gathering steam and a rapidly growing new channel for contact centers. Gartner states that  "By 2013, at least 35% of customer service centers will integrate some form of community/social capabilities as a part of the contact center solution." (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers, 9 April 2010)   Read more»

Customers like it when you hear what they have to say. They like it when you favorably respond to a call, chat or email into your call center, and they really like it when hear what they're saying on social media. Why? A couple of reasons: first, social media is new and not every company is participating in it. That makes any response via social media an unexpected surprise. Second, social media is largely a passive means of communication. You have to go out and search for what people are saying in most cases. When you respond to a social media post, it shows you cared enough to find it. USA Today recently wrote about a few companies that are taking social media customer service to heart.   Read more»

If you're not already engaged in social networks, your customers are. And what they're saying (and you're not hearing) can certainly hurt you.

Two primary excuses for not engaging (or at least monitoring) the social conversation are: First, fear of transparency and perceived lack of control. And second, lack of control.   Read more»

In recent memory, few things have preoccupied contact center managers' minds as has the topic of public social networks and how to deal with them.  Most managers will admit that, while they're aware of the ever-increasing popularity of sites such as Twitter and Facebook and of the potential challenges and benefits that come with such channels, most do not have a salient strategy or roadmap to follow.

While one could write many healthy books on the topic, in this post, I will attempt to provide a high level roadmap for contact centers specifying incremental steps they can take to go from merely being aware of social media all the way to leveraging them and potentially going as far as serving as nerve centers within their organizations for all social media activity.  The roadmap serves a dual purpose: it is also a maturity model against which to judge a contact center's developmental maturity vis-a-vis other centers.    Read more»