Transforming Customer Care with Social Media

Social Media represents one of the greatest opportunities to transform Customer Care operations. The potential impact goes beyond traditional cost improvement such as inbound call deflection or non-voice cost channels to the heart of customer sentiment where improvements in revenue, sales, and net income are driven by increasing customer loyalty. The SocialSphere from the Social Networks like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to Private, Industry, and Corporate Blogs is like a naturally occurring resource for corporations that generates millions of messages containing intelligence on customer sentiment, opportunities to shape and maintain customer loyalty, and a low-cost communication channel for resolving customer issue or driving sales.

However, the dark and wild side of Social Media is the impact of one consumer’s negative web input combined with others compounded by the shear volume of data that can be generated by the viral connections of social networks.  The power generated by social networks working together like a flock of birds, or a school of fish, has put brand image in the hands of consumers and their peer networks. In July 2009, Nielsen surveyed 25,000 online consumers worldwide, and their analysis of social networks indicated, “Peer recommendation is the most trusted channel, trusted ‘completely’ or ’somewhat’ by 9 out of 10 respondents worldwide.” While this is a painfully obvious observation and an ironic death rattle an industry (e.g. market research) on the verge of obsolescence,  it underscores the power transfered to networks of peers and friends.

In the call center world of just yesterday, the Post-Call Survey by voice, IVR, or web has been the traditional measurement to gauge customer satisfaction about the customer care process for at least 15 years.  The meager polling results from post-call surveys which only reach a small population (typically less than 1 in 20 callers a day) were rarely published unless the story they told was nothing short of phenomenal. Poor results and trends, were reviewed behind close doors, and in complete secrecy. Unlike more pedestrian Market Research surveys which reach less than 50,000 people over many months at great expense, social networks generate enormous, publicly available, data sets with millions of opinions a day.  Social networks provide consumers (and also call center agents) a self-directed, addictive, and simple way to publicly broadcast their opinions to the millions of listeners, readers, and viewers. According to new data from Pingdom, Twitter users are averaging 27.3 million tweets per day with an annual run rate of 10 billion tweets. When we look at the average number of tweets per hour, Pingdom estimates that they are currently fluctuating between 567, 000 and 1.8 million per hour. The average tweets per day (TPD) measured by Hubspot was 4.422 and the average number of followers for users in their database was 103.39. Customer care departments live in fear today of  the next recording, message, or text that sets off a tsunami of negative sentiment.

Social Media traditionally the purview of the Marketing Department (and budget) now must be an important focus of Customer Care executives for managing and improving customer loyalty. Adam Smith Consulting brings together deep experience in Customer Care, Contact Centers, and Transformation with experience in the latest Social Media management approaches and tools to deliver the capability to build a Social Media Directorate within Customer Care organizations.

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Most companies are still struggling to deploy VoIP, IP Contact Centers, and Multi-Channel technologies to create a more customer-centric service experience. Meanwhile, Social Media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube, etc.) is quickly “moving the cheese” again. Executives concerned about customer loyalty… Read more on our blog

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