Although this is my final post in the Get Started Social Service series, our journey is just beginning SOCAP and CRSummit.
The rebirth of customer care has provided such a bright future for those of us struggling in the world of complaint departments.
The contact center of the future driven by social CRM gives us the opportunity to be sitting at the C-suite impacting the bottom line like never before. But we have to seize this opportunity so let’s get started.
Technology Requirements – It would be foolish to have marketing personnel use the same contact center software agents leverage to retain and wow customers for their jobs, so why would customer care use the same listening and social reporting software as marketing?
1. Filtering – There is lots of conversation on the internet. Not all of it, not even most of it is actionable so to avoid customer service agents weeding through the needle in the hay stack, make sure you are comfortable with the filtering functionality.
2. Routing – The relevant social conversation remaining after the filtering should be routed to the right response team based on your documented swim lanes.
3. Productivity – Keep it simple for customer service agents, they need to spend time responding and wowing customers not fooling around with a bunch of sexy bells and whistles. Don’t be distracted with unnecessary functionality required for marketing but just reduces usability and productivity for your agents.
Tip: Reporting is always a key requirement, here is some food for thought.
| Social Media Marketing Metrics | Social Service Metrics |
| Sentiment & Share of Conversation | How Many Customers Thanked Today |
| Friends, Followers, Views, Likes, ReTweets | How Many Customers Helped Today |
| Word Clouds & Hot Topics | Volume of Service Issues by Source (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Forums, Blogs) |
| Influencer Analysis | Top 10 Complaints & Inquiries in Social |
| Geo-Location Insights | Response Time & Escalations By Source |
Key Process Requirements – Hopefully by now you’ve realized I like to keep things simple. I don’t think you need to go crazy with process engineering and documentation right off the bat. However, there are a few key steps to get in writing and agreed upon, hope this list helps.
1. Channel Expansion – Document all the Facebook pages, Twitter handles, forums and YouTube channels (with id’s/passwords) and how you evaluate and expand into new communities.
2. Response Swim lanes – Document who is going to respond to what on each channel and get concensus with marketing.
3. Escalation & Offline – Not every consumer can be satisfied in social media with 140 characters or on a Facebook wall for the whole world to see. How are you going to respond to get them off-line? Are you going to transfer them to another function? What information are you going to transfer with the consumer? How do you close the loop back in the original social channel?
Tip: For swim lanes as your deciding on who is going to respond use actual tweets, posts and comments because it’s a harder exercise then you might expect.
Social Service Wrap Up – I really enjoyed writing this blog series and I hope you found it helpful. I’m a huge fan of everyone in the customer care community and I look forward to evangelizing on your behalf at the next SOCAP or CRSummit. Remember, keep it simple and just get started!
Tip: I would love to continue the conversation at cschaeffer@3csi.com or 614.302.2182. Scratch that, you are all social media experts now so reach out on twitter @chadschaeffer.
If you missed Monday’s Get Started! Social Service – Part 1; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/get-started-social-service-part-1/
1. Where are customers talking about your brand?
2. What are they saying?
3. How well are you responding to customer service opportunities today?
Tuesday’s post Get Started! Social Service – Part 2; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/get-started-social-service-part-2/
4. What is your current response time?
5. When are customers talking about your brand (day/time)?
6. How to start responding if you aren’t today
Wednesday’s post Get Started! Social Service – Part 3; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/get-started-social-service-part-3/
7. How to partner with marketing
8. How to define response swim lanes
9. Free social media listening tools
Thursday’s post Get Started! Social Service – Part 4; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/get-started-social-service-part-4/
10. Social care strategy
11. How to get started on Twitter
12. Who to follow on Twitter
Chad - Rappin' On Social Customer Service 