Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business. You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Building consumer engagement the social way

In fact, recent research by Nielsen found that 22.7% of time spent on the web during the past year was spent on social networking web sites, compared to 15.8% the previous year.

Combined with the rise of an 'always on' mobile society, the Twitters and Facebooks of the world have quickly become invaluable customer service and even marketing tools, Pearce argues. "Not tapping into this channel will effectively leave retailers and other businesses missing out."

As a result, Pearce suggests four key business case points in favour of the adoption of social networking within the customer communications mix:

1. Product research goes social
   Consumers are relying more than ever upon social networking sites to conduct their product research. Gone are the days when major search engines were the primary online shopping aid. Consumers have always been interested in what their families and friends are saying, and social networking sites make it easy to survey that collective feedback.

   What this means for retailers is that not having a Facebook page and Twitter feed is the digital equivalent of not yet having a Yellow Pages listing.

2. A customer service channel packed with potential
   With social networking rapidly becoming a de-facto component of the customer service mix, the question of adoption is not "if" but "when", warns Pearce.

   There is mounting evidence that social networking represents a new communications platform that is perfectly suited to being an effective customer service channel. However, there may be only a limited window of time in which tapping into social networking's potential can provide businesses with a significant competitive advantage.

3. Social customer service: to be or not to be?
   Companies now face a critical choice. They can either sit on the sidelines and watch their competitors take leadership roles on the social networking customer service front, or they can deploy applications, create Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, and establish a foundation to connect with customers via a medium that they appear to love.
4. Customer engagement at its most prolific?
   According to Pearce, the business case is very simple. By bringing customer service environments together with Facebook and Twitter, retailers can give customers easier ways to contact them. Most customers don't carry phone numbers for the companies they do business with, and they're not likely to seek out those numbers when they're away from their computers.

   But through social networks, consumers can connect directly to a company's Facebook page or Twitter feed from anywhere. By engaging customers where it's most convenient for them, the whole customer service experience is improved. "Retailers that ignore such an opportunity to connect with their customers so effortlessly will do so at their own peril," concluded Pearce.

Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business.

You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy. Grab this goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, technologies, research, suppliers and partners, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid CX strategy.

While most marketers could list maybe a dozen key points for improving their brand's Customer Experience (CX), the researchers and writers at The Marketing Factbook have identified FORTY main 'CX Keys' which will help you drive your customers to new levels of delight, loyalty, advocacy and profitability.

The areas in which customers have direct contact with your organization are perhaps the most obvious places in which CX improvements can be made, and this report addresses all 24 of these 'Direct CX Keys', applicable to offline and online businesses alike.

At the same time there are many other areas that indirectly affect CX (such as the supply chain, policies and processes) in which every business can make simple but far-reaching improvements. This report guides you through the problems and solutions for all 16 of these 'Indirect CX Keys', many of which are often forgotten or under-played even in the best CX strategies.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)