Each January there are predictions of the forthcoming year being ‘the one’ for social media.
This year is no different but for once marketing won’t be changing the game – it’s the year those folks in customer service grab the blue bird by the beak and start truly integrating public one-to-one comms into traditional email and phone service operations.
For customers (that’s all of us), Twitter and co will hopefully not just be the last chance saloon to get help or air our tales of woeful customer support.
O2’s Tweetserve for example, is a fascinating use of the omnipresent hashtag, allowing users to conduct account actions through direct messages and tagging.
Whilst I’m not sure how widespread such initiatives will become, innovators like O2 should be seen as beacons of light in the challenge of bringing together disparate support channels.
shares my view on contact centres really delving into social and I joined him, Luke Porter from Sentiment Metrics and for a Our Social Times webinar event – How to Integrate Social Media into the Contact Centre on Wed 15th Jan.
Here are some of the question that came up and my take on them:
Customer Service is moving beyond Facebook and Twitter – What are the essential social channels and how should they be integrated into customer service processes?
Beyond Facebook and Twitter, the obvious platform to mention is forums and although not seen as cutting edge, the user experience can be second to none for certain brands or products. Our client, Sony Electronics, is a perfect example and they use forums to encourage users to, in the first instance, self serve; super-users then step in if a customer is still stuck and we mange the process, escalating higher if needs be – all with defined timescales to ensure response and consistency.
Aside from forums, some will find YouTube or Vimeo invaluable if the product or service in question could benefit from tutorial style videos.
I’m not a fan of thinking every platform has to be covered unless you have the resources to handle each and every one with the care they require – spreading yourself too thin can be really damaging.
In terms of software, we’ve yet to use a platform that deals with every network, and even those concentrating on one or two are generally under par when dealing with volume or complicated escalation procedures. This is slowly changing but so are the goal posts so software providers will have a tough time for a while yet as the needs of clients develop.
That said, Sentiment Metrics are one of the few that are merging insight and process to really deliver a highly flexible social customer solution (note: they’re not paying me to say that… yet).
Technical integration – Should you stick with a legacy customer service platform and wait for their social features, integrate with a more socially-enabled platform, or go with a light-touch cloud solution?
Why not do both? Don’t wait around though as the customer isn’t. You are likely to be forced to do both anyway, as unless you build your own tools, it’s highly unlikely one platform will suit every need you have.
How do you measure success?
Let’s not beat around the bush, this area is a bloody nightmare.
Within our core social media management remit, basic insight metrics such as sentiment are popular but highly flawed. Positive, negative, neutral say very little unless the issues are black and white. Really deeper metrics are needed such as intent to purchase, product development and satisfaction.
On the call, Martin talked about measuring responsiveness and the gratitude index used by some. Wise words indeed and if we all did nothing but aim to improve response speeds (and quality), customers would be happier.
Taking this further, Luke invoked the phase ‘Big Data’ and whilst he couldn’t see me wincing at the mention of that dreadful term, capturing information throughout the entire social customer journey is vital.
The caveat for me though is to capture what you can manage. Think ‘Small Data’ first – one or two valuable metrics you can really deliver.
Challenges of management – How do you manage peaks and troughs of activity on social channels?
A big topic this. A good example is we manage the Call of Duty Facebook pages with 20+ million fans and a fairly erratic traffic profile influenced by game launches, etc.
We tend to resource every moderator with spare capacity and train approximately 30% more people than we need.
We also operate as overspill and out-of-hours resources for folks like McDonald’s, and if our role doesn’t include carte blanche to respond we’ll provide a triage process of acknowledgement, immediate escalation and follow up.
For those with resource issues, a hybrid internal/external approach can work wonders.
Retrain or hire? - Roughly 60% of social customer service is provided by existing support staff, but hiring new staff brings in new skills.
Both. You won’t be able to switch every agent in a centre to a blended, cross-media agent as however easy people think it is to throw out a tweet, social customer service is marketing wrapped up in a customer service blanket and every message has the potential to cause a major fail. It is unfair to expect someone that might be amazing on the phone to be as amazing with the written word.
Marketing or pure service? – In a public environment, there are PR and marketing implications for every conversation. How should service teams manage that?
For us, customer service doesn’t start at the first irate phone call or email, it starts from the moment a marketing message is posted on Facebook or Twitter.
Even if that message isn’t soliciting engagement it has immediately opened a channel of communication that is likely to require customer service style interaction.
We find training writers on social far easier than training social media experts to write and when I say writing I mean staff you are comfortable with handing the bottom line of your company to.
First contact resolution would of course be ideal, but it would be unfair to expect every call handler to be able to respond with marketing-style prose, or even agencies to respond with the perfect product-specific answer.
A blend of skills, both in-house and outsourced, managed through a clear process, with deliverable KPIs is the best way forward.
If you’d like to listen the full webinar, head on over to Our Social Times, and do feel free to leave any comments below, it would be lovely to hear from you.
Happy New Year!
Dom Sparkes is CEO of Tempero, a frustrated musician and occasional drinker of fine Bordeaux.
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