By michaelpace on January 25, 2012
Again this week I am attending and speaking at a Customer Service / Contact Center conference, and I am seeing lots of talk of companies interested in social media, but very few acting on it. I can understand the trepidation to jump in, and I am concerned for my horizontal (customer service). The value of a social organization is so incredibly powerful, and by not participating you are missing more than just a new channel. Over the last year and a half, I have presented the following presentation to help get folks started using social for Customer Service.
Now you don’t get the benefit of my performance, but I will try to provide a high level summary.
Starting with WHY:
- Its how people are talking and sharing
- Peer sharing is overwhelming more trusted than traditional marketing
- Don’t believe me, go watch your kids
5 Steps to Success
- Get Yourself Involved
- Get to know LinkedIn, Facebook (for business), Twitter, Blogs & other resources
- Its like learning to ride a bike, you cannot do it by reading a book or watching
2. Know Your Business
- Overall strategy and objectives (social media is not an objective, its a tool)
- Know your customers – what’s important, where are they, industry best practices
- Get others involved
3. Listen to your customers
- Monitoring
- Understand their language
4. The Customer Conversation
- Service Level Agreements for great social support
- Know the voice of your brand
- A conversation is two way, build a relationship rather than complete a transaction
5. Capture Info and Catalog
- Keep it simple at first
- Don’t worry about operational metrics yet
Objectives and Metrics
- Depending on your social maturity, balance business metrics and your learning agenda
- Engagement = Customer Acquisition x Retention x Average Revenue x Profitability
- Positive and negative sentiment impact customer acquisition and retention
- Educate your customers – the more they trust and understand, the more they will spend
- Social costs per channel can be 1/6 of other channels (phone)
Hiring and People
- You need a different type of agent to handle social media conversations
- Basic qualifications and responsibilities
If you have questions or would like to talk more about the presentation, comment or send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter or email.
Presented at:
IQPC‘s Call Center Summit (Orlando) – January 2011
ICMI‘s ACCE(New Orleans) – June 2011
Contact Center Association Fall Event (Phoenix) – October 2011
ICMI‘s Call Center Demo (Dallas) – October 2011
TSIA’s Technology Services World (Las Vegas) – October 2011 *voted Top 10 presentations by attendees*
