Here are several excerpts from a most interesting article by Aphrodite Brinsmead with Datamonitor, Twitter and Google as Customer Service Tools. Check out the complete source article for much more detail on this topic:
The current business environment consists of a struggling economy, in which customer acquisition is challenging, while consumers are increasingly sharing information on the web. These trends have created an opportunity for contact centers to utilize social networking websites to improve customer service at a low cost, by integrating Web 2.0 technologies with other communication technologies.
Call centers have been rebranded ‘contact centers’ because of the multiple ways in which customers can now contact customer service representatives. The traditional voice channel is rapidly being supplemented by email, SMS, interactive voice response (IVR) and instant messaging (IM). In the current economic climate, enterprises are more focused on customer retention and cost saving, and these new channels not only represent a convenient way for customers to communicate with the enterprise, but also an opportunity to save on agent costs.
Concurrent with the increased use of new channels for customer communication, enterprises are striving to understand customer issues in order to improve products and service. They are using knowledge management tools and customer analytics to understand trends. One communication channel that is still relatively untapped by enterprises is Web 2.0; the use of blogs, social networking, forums and search engines to share information. In 2009 contact center vendors and enterprises will begin to leverage these tools, as the vision of a truly multichannel contact center is realized.
salesforce.com has unveiled a customer-service-focused initiative called the Service Cloud, which connects social networking with client interaction processes, utilizing forums and search engines for customer feedback. Salesforce.com has initially partnered with Google and Facebook, but Datamonitor expects this list of partners to expand in the near future.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Service Cloud is the ability to push information from a knowledge base into Google. Customers searching for a query can be directed straight to the related FAQ on a business web page utilizing the Salesforce.com-Google partnership. The timing of this release makes sense as there has been a significant increase in information exchange via the web over the last couple of years.
Twitter is a cross between an online forum and instant messaging tool, which enables registered users to post short messages on their profile, which can be viewed by those who subscribe to their feed (known as followers). The service has been in the news frequently because of its use by celebrities and, more relevant, its use by leading retail brands to provide customer support and answer queries. Some of the early adopters that have successfully built up a presence on Twitter include Bank of America, Comcast, JetBlue, and Zappos, alongside many media and technology companies.
CRM vendor Oracle is offering the option for enterprises to publish information from CRM OnDemand directly to Twitter. This type of communication could be used to inform agents or staff of changes, and as the technology moves forward it can also be used to provide customers with news updates or changes to product information.
Consumers are becoming more comfortable in sharing information about products and experiences on blogs and forums. The benefits are clear, because social networking websites are quick and easy to use, as opposed to writing letters or finding the correct telephone number. Contact centers managers should consider innovative ways to use the information from Twitter and Google searches in order to understand customers’ needs more accurately and to discover issues with their customer service, and the products and services they are selling. Contact center staff can use Twitter to provide technical support, advice and product updates, as well as to find out what competitors are doing. Searching for brand mentions and customer complaints can help businesses to resolve customer problems before they escalate. This may result in extra security controls with opt-in clauses, in order to prevent spamming and protect customer privacy.
Customer experience analysis vendors, such as ClickFox, SAS and SPSS, should find ways to use the information from social networking to help enterprises understand and analyze data from customers. Knowledge management vendors should follow the lead of Fuze and Salesforce.com in integrating these tools to leverage customer information. Vendors using Google to display targeted information, after a particular search has been carried out, should clearly distinguish information from advertising to avoid possible customer irritation.
Datamonitor predicts that websites such as Twitter will become more ingrained into contact center customer service and CRM strategies, and enterprises should begin working closely with vendors to discover the best ways to leverage customer information. Google’s search capabilities are likely to be used for mining information from relevant websites. Vendors should also present enterprises with the return on investment (ROI) benefits of such technologies; these ROI analyses should be relatively clear in terms of reduction in agent pressure and increased utilization of lower-cost self-service.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Interesting article indeed. Thanks for sharing it.