17 Social Customer Service Reports You Can’t Live Without!

I have the best job in the world. I get to do what I truly love which is help clients improve their social customer service programs. I’ve been fortunate to be in this small but growing niche for almost 5 years now after spending 9 years helping some of the largest global contact centers provide a world-class customer experience to their consumers. After all these years the questions I get asked most is very similar across all the industries I’m fortunate to work in.

How do I measure the value of social care?

What metrics and KPI’s should I track?

What is the ROI of social care?

These questions of course are answered by the reporting you have in place to analyze and optimize social customer service performance. I thought you might find it helpful if I shared a quick list based on my experience on the reports I found most valuable. I’m sure I’ve missed many that you are using today, please share them in the comments section so others can learn from what is working for you!

Enjoy.

#1 – Inbound Volume by Day

Response time is a critical metric and the best way to reduce it is to make sure you are staffed when your consumers are posting to social networks. I had a client whose volume only went down 20% on the weekend but was only staffing Monday through Friday. They used an inbound volume report by day to secure investment for weekend resources.

#2 – Inbound Volume by Hour

Similar to the report above, it’s also important to know when during the day consumers are posting. Again, to optimize response time, agents should be staffed to mimic the highest volume periods of the day. A previous client staffed 8-5pm EST but after analyzing inbound volume by hour realized 5-10pm EST was the highest volume posting time. This actionable data gave them the proof they needed to create a second shift of agents and stagger them across the day to reduce response time.

#3 – Response Time

At first glance this metric seems straight forward. Simply, how long does it take to respond to consumers posting in social media? However, most clients don’t want the time they aren’t monitoring social sites to count against them. (i.e. If consumer posts on 5pm on Friday and response is sent 10am Monday, the response time is only a few hours, not a few days since there is no weekend coverage). There is only one metric for response time, that is customer time, the customer doesn’t care when you monitor or not, it does not improve your service to play games with the numbers. Second complexity is many social posts require multiple back and forth engagements before the case is closed, so is response time from the first engagement or when the case is closed? I’d argue its important to report on both so see #4.

#4 – Case Close Time

With Response Time we learned its critical to track how long it takes to provide that initial response to a consumer’s social media post. Case Close Time tracks the total time it takes to close a post or case. It’s ok to follow-up and have some back and forth with a consumer to resolve their issue, but it doesn’t do any good to respond quickly on the first engagement only to frustrate the consumer because it takes a day or two to ultimately close out their case.

#5 – Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Score

In Twitter I recommend sending a follow-up tweet immediately after closing out a social post that says, “On a scale of 0-10, 10 being very likely, how likely are you to recommend our social customer service?” If you have cell numbers for your consumers and have the ability to send short text/SMS surveys, that is a good option as well. (i.e. Rate your social customer service experience 1-5 by texting 1-5 to 12345. AT&T is using this method.

#6 – Total Volume Trended Over Time

It’s not atypical to see social care volume growth rates increasing 50% a year as more and more consumers adopt social as a support channel. With growth rates that significant it requires contact center managers to constantly evaluate their staffing and hiring approach. Perhaps traditional channels like email and phone are decreasing over time and that pool of agents can be allocated to the social channel.

#7 – Likes, Shares, Favorites, Retweets

These metrics are typically used by social marketers to measure the success of social content published on Facebook and Twitter. However, they are also great service metrics to show the value of responses coming directly from social customer service agents. If consumers appreciate your responses and see them as helpful they will positively share it with a like or RT.

#8 – Top Issues, Questions, Praise

The most successful contact centers have always taken the goldmine of feedback from the voice of the customer and shared that actionable data back across the enterprise so products and services can be improved. Social is no different and is probably even more critical because social word of mouth is so much more powerful than the phone, email and chat channels.  For example, every month product management should be receiving reports on the top 10 complaints, questions and praise consumers have posted on social networks. Trending these metrics over time, comparing them to previous time periods and percent change are also elements to be considered for these type of reports.

#9 – Open Case Visibility

When cases are open, that means a customer is waiting. It’s critical to have a report view into how many open cases, case age, agent assigned and type of case to make sure open case volume is proactively managed.

#10 – Volume by Social Site

It’s important to break down inbound volume by Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc. Typically agents are assigned to queues or sites so understanding the volume can help align the right coverage for each social channel.

#11 – Reporting by Tags/Labels

Especially with Twitter and its 140 characters, it can be tough to get enough actionable data from a tweet to share with the rest of the organization. However, most social listening and contact tools provide the ability to add tags or additional labels to social interactions which you can then report on. For example, adding specific product or brand names, location info if you are a retailer or restaurant, perhaps adding severity level to a post to understand the frequency of high priority issues.

#12 – Reporting by Influencers

All consumers deserve your best service, however, we can’t ignore the impact of influencers in social media. Because of that, its important to be able to filter almost all of the above reports by posts from influencers. Top complaints from influencers, response time for influencers, open cases by influencers, NPS/CSAT by influencers are all valuable in looking at how your social care is impacted by Klout scores and follower counts.

#13 – Cross Channel Reporting

Social is just one piece of the overall consumer support experience. Although rapidly growing, for most companies social is still less than 5% of overall support volume compared to phone and email. However, leading contact centers are integrating social into their CRM tool so they can report on not just social metrics but also cross-channel key performance indicators. For example, top issues by channel, cost per contact per channel, CSAT by channel and agent productivity by channel. To be clear, by channel I mean phone, email, chat, self service, communities and social.

#14 – Engagement Rate

In my experience clients can get too wrapped up in reviewing social posts and deciding if its technically a support post or if a post requires action. The bottom line is the consumer took the time to post something on one of your social properties, don’t they deserve a response? Isn’t friendly engagement one of the ways you build better community and a stronger presence on Facebook and Twitter? I think so and that is why I think its important to measure the total amount of posts you receive and divide it by the total number of engagements or responses to get your engagement rate. This is especially important for Twitter handles dedicated to support.

#15 – Social Profiles Captured

One of the single toughest challenges facing the social customer service community is understanding if @ChadSchaeffer on Twitter is the Chad Schaeffer in Plymouth, MI with a phone number and email address in a CRM database. Linking social id’s with traditional customer info is required for the 360 view of the customer so many marketers and service professionals aspire to. Consequently, measuring how many social profiles are being added and combined in your CRM system is a new metric I think leading professionals will begin to track and communicate.

#16 – Social Resolution Rate

A new personal favorite of mine is measuring the rate you are able to resolve a consumer’s issue within the social media channel. Too many times I’m seeing brands respond with “call us at 1-800 or email us by clicking this link”. If consumers wanted to use the phone or email to contact you they would have chosen those channels in the first place. I also don’t buy the all too convenient response of ‘we don’t want to discuss issues over social’, private messaging is available in both Twitter and Facebook to conveniently resolve consumer issues more discretely. Fundamentally, consumers are choosing social support channels because they require less effort than filling out a long email form or waiting on hold and fumbling through an IVR.

#17 – Productivity

The reason I saved productivity for last is because it’s the least important social care metric. I think the industry is learning over time that quality is always better than speed when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction. Zappos has publicly stated they don’t even measure handle time anymore for any service channel. Average time on case and average cases closed per day by agent should only be used as a coaching tool or directional guide. You might even find the agents with higher handle times also have higher CSAT or NPS scores!

 

How to Solve the #1 Challenge in Social!

For those of you who have joined me every week in 2013 here on the no fluff social media blog I really appreciate you. If its your first time checking it out, Welcome!

Working for the Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud I get to discuss social media with the world’s largest brands everyday and there is almost always one common challenge.

How do I know if my customer Chad Schaeffer, who lives in Plymouth, Michigan, and has an email of chadmschaeffer@gmail.com and the new 313 area code cell phone is the same guy on Twitter @ChadSchaeffer.

BTW…..Did you realize there are three Chad Schaeffer’s in South Dakota alone? This can be a tricky problem!

In the world of marketing and customer service everything starts with knowing who your customers are and this challenge in social media has companies pulling their hair out. Some of the systems being used to store customer data can’t even capture twitter handle.

I think the reasons are obvious why marketers want to know who you are in social media, things like;

1. They want to target you based on demographic data

2. They want to target you based on what you do and where you go online

3. They want to target you based on what you have bought in the past

Likewise in customer service

1. They want to personalize their service, maybe give you the white glove treatment if you are an influencer

2. They want to know if you have called, emailed or chatted with them before about your issue/question

3. They want to build a customer history for you, understanding what your experience has been like with their brand

So how do you match twitter handles with your existing customer data?  Don’t do what I’ve seen some companies trying to do. Building complex search algorithms that match Twitter profile data with customer data in a CRM database and try to merge the two together automatically.

The solution is far easier and we only have to go back 13 years in history to find it.

It’s called email.

When I first started working in CRM in 2000, brands began preparing for consumer email.  Personal email starting becoming popular around 1995 but it always takes a few years for companies to catch up to consumers.

In 2000 it was the same question, people are sending me emails from bigbooty@aol.com and slimshady@hotmail.com, how do I know who they are?

Remember what happened next?

Apply for a store credit card (enter email address), call customer service (can I have your email address), join a loyalty program (email address), buy something online (create a username aka email address), want to receive coupons and special offers (email address), want to stop junk mail and join or email list (email address).

Fast forward and what do most Fortune 500 consumer base companies have? Giant CRM systems filled with consumer information linked with an email address.

I’m just not smart enough to think of the really advanced brilliant technological solutions so I have to do the best I can with my average smarts and find the simple no fluff common sense approaches like start asking your consumers for their twitter handle every time they interact with you!

Here is the last point, again similar to email. Your customers data privacy should be a high priority, same with only using that twitter handle for things your consumer has agreed to.  Let’s learn from the credibility many companies have lost by spamming consumers.

Heading to Punta Cana for a few days, I hope wherever you are the sun is shining on you as well! Until next week.

Get Started! Social Service – Part 5

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

Get Started! Social Service – Part 3

Upon returning from the SOCAP and CRSummit conferences the challenge for many customer service professionals was clear.

How do I launch a social customer care program?

For the past 12 years I’ve been a huge advocate and evangelist for the contact center so I’m creating a daily 5 part series to help you get started!

Its hump day of your first week back from CRSummit, don’t lose your focus and momentum, stick with it!  Remember, as customer experience leadership professionals we owe it to our consumers to get involved in social media.  They are counting on us!

Let’s Get Started – Part 3!

How to Partner With Marketing – Focus on what you can both rally around, the customer! Too often I see contact center leadership get off on the wrong foot with marketing with the “Who should own social media?” discussion. If you are just launching a social care presence, you aren’t ready to own social.  Here is what you DO own! Customers on Facebook and Twitter who have questions, complaints or take the time to say I love your products/services are being ignored like in this example.

Tips:

• Customer service has low-cost expert resources that can increase engagement without breaking the social media budget.
• Contact centers already work flexible hours and can help with off hours response.
• Ask marketing for their help in providing social media training for your contact center agents.
• Exceptional social service improves peer-to-peer recommendation and word of mouth, aka, THE most effective marketing.

Defining Response Swim Lanes – Consumers are slowly migrating away from traditional customer service channels and moving towards Facebook, Twitter and other social communities for service growing the online conversation.

This presents a challenge: Who is the right internal team to respond to each of these consumers?  How do you keep from bumping into each other?

The answer is to define, agree and put in writing the most common categories of social conversation and who will respond to each.

For example, Sony has over 2 million fans on Facebook.  Their customers have questions about promotions, future products, technical questions, fans uploading photos, quality complaints, where to buy questions and thousands of other engagement opportunities.

If each team stays in their swim lane, each customer can receive outstanding service from the most knowledgeable company ambassador.

Tip: Here is a quick and simple example of swim lanes

Marketing/PR	Customer Service
Future Product Questions	Product Complaints
Campaign Complaints/Inquiries	Product Suggestions
Crisis Communications	Existing Ownership Product Inquiries
Blogger/Influencer Interactions	Warranty & Rebate Questions
Upcoming Events	Service & Policy Issues
Charity/Environmental Concerns	Thanking Customers For Compliments

Get Started With a Free Social Media Listening Tool – Most global 1000 brands with a strong online customer care presence have pretty sophisticated social CRM requirements and ultimately a technology partner will become a necessity.

However, don’t let the process of creating an RFP, approving a budget and choosing a vendor stand in your way of getting started right now!

HootSuite is an awesome tool for beginners that will allow you to track your brands Facebook pages, Twitter handles and company blog. You can also create custom searches based on keywords/hashtags (i.e. top product name).  Most importantly, you can respond and engage directly with consumers via HootSuite.  Actually most importantly, did I mention Hootsuite is free?

See you tomorrow when I discuss;

1. Customer Care Goals & Strategies

2. How to Set Up a Personal Twitter Account

3. Social Media Thought Leaders

If you missed Monday’s Get Started! Social Service – Part 1 post, you can find it right here: https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/get-started-social-service-part-1/

The focus was on 3 things.

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 is right here; https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/get-started-social-service-part-2/

Tuesday’s key topics.

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

Get Started! Social Service – Part 2

While presenting recently at the SOCAP & CRSummit customer service conferences focusing on social media I met so many fantastic people who were struggling with how to launch their social customer care program. They recognize the avalanche of customer service opportunity is growing by the day and its time to do something about it and I’m here to help!

Each day this week I’m creating a simple blog post for beginners that will require no budget or technology.  (just a LITTLE bit of time commitment)

If you missed yesterdays Get Started! Social Service – Part 1 post, you can find it right here: https://chadschaeffer.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/get-started-social-service-part-1/

The focus was on 3 things.

1. Where are customers talking about your brand?

2. What are they saying?

3. How well are you responding to customer service opportunities today?

Now its time to move on to Part 2. Let’s Get Started!

Response Time – If you are in the 25% minority that does respond to customer service opportunities in social media, how responsive are you in each channel?  Do a quick audit of your Twitter & Facebook pages, typically do you get back to customers within an hour? 24 hours?  That number is different dependent on industry but in general under an hour will WOW your customers, under 3hrs is still very good, 24hrs and you are pushing your luck.

Tip: Forum response times in the 4-6 hour range are typically seen as strong, even up to 24hrs is acceptable.

Social Arrival Pattern – Closely linked, in order to have an effective response time you have to understand what time customers post service opportunities in social.  The numbers may surprise you, for one of my large clients more volume comes in from 5pm-12am EST then 9-5pm EST.  Furthermore, their weekend volume only dips about 20% from weekday volume.

Tip: If you decide to start with 9-5pm EST, post those listening times in each social channel to set customer expectations.

How to Start Responding (Every Time!) – This is the one step that makes customer care professionals the most nervous.  Trust me, it’s not going to be as difficult as you might think.  Simply report on the top 20 reasons for contact for email and phone calls.  Typically, customer service opportunities in social are very similar.  So you can leverage the years of experience in responding to consumers in more traditional channels with all the same tools at your finger tips like your CRM tool, response library and knowledge management system.

Tip: Print out a common email response template, have your agents reword in 140 characters.

See you tomorrow when I discuss;

1. Customer Service & Marketing Partnership in Social

2. How to Create Response Swim Lanes

3. Free Social Monitoring Tools

Get Started! Social Service – Part 1

I recently presented at the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Baltimore and the Customer Response Summit in Austin on some of the fundamentals of creating a successful social customer care program. The most frequent question I was asked was, “Where do I start?”

I’m creating a week-long series of simple tips that requires no budget or fancy technology. I hope you find my blog helpful. Let’s get started!

Social Heat Map – First, you have to understand where the relationship building opportunities are by evaluating how much conversation takes place on each social community. Keep it simple, if there are 50+ opportunities a day its hot, 20+ its medium, 1+ its mild. It can vary by industry but start in this order;

1. Twitter
2. Surprisingly second, check out online forums and user communities
3. Facebook
4. Google+
5. Company Blog
6. LinkedIn (Company Page Comments, Groups)
7. YouTube (Company & Personal Channel)
8. Personal/Industry Blogs (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger)
9. Review Sites (Yelp, Trip Adviser)
10. Pinterest
11. FourSquare

Remember, you are looking for actionable relationship building opportunities, not just brand mentions.

Tip #1 – A large 3CSI automobile client has 6 times the conversation on forums like Camaro5 and Corvette then they do on Facebook.

Social Conversation Map – What is the tone of the online conversation? Evaluate on each channel the primary reason for discussion. Twitter is great for compliments, proactive and sales leads. Forums generally have customers troubleshooting issues and asking questions.

1. Complaints
2. Questions
3. Compliments
4. Proactive (i.e. In the auto industry, participate in discussion about fuel mileage or towing)
5. Sales Leads (i.e. Should I buy the new Cadillac CTS or Lincoln MKZ?)

Tip #2 – Aren’t we trying to create raving fans in social so they influence their friends and family? So start by acknowledging and thanking all the customers online that already love you and take the time to share their praise.

Social Response Audit – Once you know where the conversation is happening do a simple self audit on Twitter, a few top forums and Facebook looking for consumer questions/complaints/compliments that have been ignored. Industry data suggests that about 70% of brands don’t respond to customer complaints on Facebook and Twitter.  Don’t be a part of that stat!

Tip #3 – Start from the bottom of Facebook streams and work your way up. Generally brands respond to the first few comments and ignore the stream as it grows.

Marketing Will You Dance With Me? Love, Customer Service

It’s like the 8th grade dance all over again.

I can remember it like yesterday.

I wanted to dance with her, she didn’t even know I was alive.

I’ll write her a note “Will You Dance With Me? Circle One –> YES or YES” She’ll laugh and think I’m funny.

Def Leppard “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, my jam…its my time…I…just…can’t.

Get over it customer service, I know you want to be involved in social media so just ask marketing to dance!

You might be nervous on how to start the conversation and maybe marketing does just think you’re the complaint department but once they get to know you it will be like Dancing With The Stars!

Now you don’t want to use a cheesy pick up line like, “hey baby, marketing is the new customer service” so here are a few tips!

5 Ways Customer Service Departments Can Break the Social Media Ice With Marketing

1. Introduce Yourself & Start With a Compliment

“Thank you for owning social media for our brand, social media has become one of the most important strategies in our company. All the customer engagement has been fun to watch. Ironically, phone and email contacts are declining. It appears our consumers want to receive customer service on Facebook and Twitter. Can we work together combining our expertise to drive even more raving fans in social media?”

Who is going to say no to that?

2. Just Be Honest, Tell Marketing Your Intentions

Some customers on Facebook and Twitter who have questions, complaints or take the time to say I love your products/services are being ignored. You want to help marketing by doing what you do best, helping customers!

3. Don’t Step on Her Feet and Define Engagement Swim Lanes

Marketing is still going to own social media so its important to be clear how customer service interactions are going to be handled by creating response swim lanes. Here is what a quick example might look like.

Marketing/PR	Customer Service
Future Product Questions	Product Complaints
Campaign Complaints/Inquiries	Product Suggestions
Crisis Communications	Existing Ownership Product Inquiries
Blogger/Influencer Interactions	Warranty & Rebate Questions
Upcoming Events	Service & Policy Issues
Charity/Environmental Concerns	Thanking Customers For Compliments

4. Pick the Right Dance So You Stay In Rythm

Whether its an elegant ballroom foxtrot or the cha-cha, a successful performance requires partners that compliment each other well. Social media reporting is no different. Helping customers online with a timely response in each social channel compliments everything marketing is trying to accomplish with social media.  Hope these examples are helpful!

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

5. How To Get Marketing To Kick Off Her Shoes!

Now its time to close the deal with what every marketer will love to hear.

• Customer service has low cost expert resources that can increase engagement without breaking the social media budget.
• Contact centers already work flexible hours and can help with off hours response.
• Ask marketing for their help in providing social media training for your contact center agents, social engagement vs phone/email engagement is like the waltz and the tango.
• Exceptional social service improves peer to peer recommendation and word of mouth, aka, THE most effective marketing

So customer service, stop being a wall flower, start with these 5 steps and you might end up like this happy couple on the dance floor!

 

(wait for it)

—-

Image source: Shutterstock.com confused bride

9 Good and 2 Stupid Ideas On Why Customer Care Should Have A Seat At The Social Media Table

If you are a customer care professional and struggling to get involved with social media at your company, this blog was written for you.  Please use this list and tailor it to your situation to convince your organization to give you a seat at the social media table!

1. Customer care offers the most affordable resources to engage consumers in social media.  Annual cost for 5-10 customer service agents is probably equal to 1 month of billings from a top digital agency.

2. Customer care engages directly with consumers more than any part of the organization.  A productive contact center agent interacts with over 50 consumers a day.  How does that compare to other parts of the organization?

3. Providing customer service in social media doesn’t have to be a 24x7x365 job but the immediacy of the channel does dictate more than a 9 to 5 schedule.  Many contact centers offer expanded hours and flexible staffing including at-home agents.

4. A social service strategy is a little different then a social media strategy.  You don’t have to have a social media strategy on every new and emerging site like Pinterest.  However, if your customers are discussing your brand on Pinterest and comment analysis shows they have questions and/or complaints.  You should have a service strategy on Pinterest.

5. Related to the point above, social service is more than just Facebook and Twitter. For one of my clients, Facebook is a distant third in customer complaint volume compared to forums and Twitter.

6. Handling customer service issues can be tricky, especially irate customers.  No one has more training and expertise in handling challenging consumers than customer care.

7. Customer service agents are adept at escalation procedures and multi-channel management since consumer emails are often resolved through phone calls.  As we know in social, some interactions are best handled off-line in another channel.

8. There is a difference between engagement and customer service.  Have you ever noticed this behavior on Facebook?  A new Facebook post is made by a brand, initially the brand comments frequently, trying to turn the brush fire into a forest fire of engagement.  Once thousands of customers are commenting, where is the brand presence after comment 2,397 for the customer that needs assistance?  Customer care typically has designed their social tools to listen to every post.

9. Some customers require back and forth to address their issue , capturing the entire conversation is critical.  Customer care can tailor their social monitoring tools to support the conversation requirement just as they’ve done on the phone and email.

If the above don’t work, try these.

1. Print out customer complaints/questions on a competitor Facebook and Twitter page that have been handled well.

2. Print out customer complaints/questions on your brand Facebook and Twitter pages that have NOT been answered.

Contact Centers: The Rodney Dangerfield of Your Brand!

Last week I celebrated my 10 year anniversary at Astute Solutions as a customer experience evangelist.  I couldn’t be more humbled to be working with the most amazing set of clients in this fantastic customer service industry.

I think the contact center is the most underappreciated department in most Global 1000 organizations.  Like Rodney Dangerfield, “They Get No RESPECT!”

Complaint department, expense center, cost center, non-strategic, dreaded IVR hell (automated phone system), outsourced to India….and that is what they say to our face!

Ask some executives to spend a day in their own contact center and they’d rather line up appointments to the dentist, jury duty & tax accountant, followed by cleaning out the garage!

Of course we know successful contact centers drive loyalty, retain consumers, protect the brand by resolving high risk issues, share actionable consumer feedback, improve word of mouth marketing and increase life time value of the consumer.

Let me speak the language of the executive, all that ‘soft’ stuff equals increased revenue, profits, stock price, and earnings per share.  Don’t you agree?

You may be surprised to hear what really goes on inside a contact center with millions of consumers calling, emailing, texting, tweeting, facebooking, blogging and yes even grandma is still writing.

Dick’s Sporting Goods knows helping dad pick out the perfect baseball bat makes them just a tiny part of that huge priceless smile rounding third from a first ever home run!

Imagine working in the British Airways call center and speaking with a new bride on her honeymoon in Italy with lost luggage.  That agent will impact one of her most memorable experiences ever, how many people over the course of a bride’s life would she tell about BA losing her luggage if the situation wasn’t handled with class and empathy?

What dad doesn’t want to spoil his little girl on her 16th birthday with a car?  Even if it is a 1984 Gold Grand Marquis (my first car, nicknamed the Gold Digger!)  On wet roads, driving too fast, it’s the reps at Michelin that sleep at night knowing princess will get home safely with those new Michelin tires.

The incredible service reps at L’Oreal help women through their hair coloring experience, you never know if that big first date Saturday could be prince charming and the new color gives every woman a little extra confidence!

If you have an ill grandparent, you know how important it is to have someone courteous and knowledgeable at Walgreen’s help with the healthiest way to administer a prescription.  It can be a life or death situation for your loved one.

At Ragu, what may seem like mom just calling about a recipe, is actually a special dinner for her son’s first home cooked meal returning from Afghanistan.

I hope I get to spend the next 10 years working with more incredible people in the contact center industry, these are the types of experiences contact centers have every day with consumers and why I think they are the Rodney Dangerfield of most brands and “Can’t Get No Respect!”.

Chad “Rappin’ on Customer Service”