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How Social can make Service a differentiator

On average, companies around the world spend some US$500 billion on advertising and US$50 billion on CRM (customer relationship management) - so why are they spending only US$9 billion on contact centre operations? Despite this massive advertising spend, a recent survey by the American Marketing Association (AMA) indicates that only 14% of consumers trust traditional advertising, while 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, and 70% trust peer reviews posted online.

The new social media communications channels now have a big part to play in marketing. In fact, Genesys research conducted in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) found that, while marketing has dominated the use of new communication channels, 60% of respondents said that marketing is the main function of the new social media channels. So companies predominantly use social media to broadcast highly targeted, personalised sales and marketing messages to 'push' the company brand message, rather than for broader public engagement campaigns that focus on customer service and customer retention, and creating brand advocates.

But only 6% of respondents regarded customer support or service as the main purpose of new social media communication channels. But customer service staff are the people who have a direct one-to-one relationship with the consumer, and who are perfectly poised to help build brand advocates and exploit the power of social media. Customers impressed with a product or service are more likely to let their social media friends know, acting as unpaid brand advocates.

An integrated approach provides the best all round customer experience. By using social media monitoring tools, customer service and the organisation at large, can 'hear' their consumers, provide timely responses, determine the appropriate action and manage other issues that may arise. By adopting a method of intelligent distribution of tasks, by using an automated solution (such as the Genesys Intelligent Workload Distribution (iWD) back office suite), a business can create an enterprise-wide task list sorted by business value, and prioritise and distribute these tasks to the right resource in real time. Defining priorities and service levels based on the business value of each task ensures that the the highest value tasks get completed first, and that right resources are proactively dealing with the most critical tasks.

As most customers are users of social media, effectively and efficiently managing customer interactions to provide the best customer experience, allows customer service delivery to become part of the consumer dialogue. This integrated approach means that businesses need to sort out formal methods to manage their response to the new social media communication channels. The company's research showed that businesses are beginning to understand this, with 47% using a team and 27% using an individual to manage social media. The team should certainly work across all departments, not just marketing, because the skills to manage and exploit consumer opportunities always involves different departments.

At the point of service, a company becomes 'real' to its prospects and buyers. These conversations, which engage the consumer directly, can capture important insights to allow the company to better manage and build its brand. By producing instant and highly relevant responses from whichever department is involved, brands can also create valuable advocates whose online reviews are trusted by 70% of consumers and whose recommendations are trusted by 90%.

Have you seen The Marketing Factbook?

The Marketing Factbook will help you up your marketing game, walking you through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations you need for a hgih-profit, high-rentention marketing strategy.

This comprehensive marketing guide has 400+ packed pages of marketing strategy, trends, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and tons of ideas to boost sales revenue, market share, ROI, and profits. It's the report no marketer can afford to be without.

Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability.

Find out what works and what doesn't, who's succeeded and how they did it, and how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds. This report gives you the data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy.

Get the hard facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, studies, research and white papers, and gain an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Marketing Factbook at your side, you'll have a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy: All the know-how, strategies and ideas you need to get your own Marketing Playbook right, first time.

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