Developing an Effective Social Care Program
by Walter Van Norden, Marketing Director, TELUS International
Recent research* reveals that 70% of companies ignore customer complaints on Twitter. In today’s social climate, it’s a risky strategy to take. After all, it’s unlikely that companies would ignore 7 out of 10 regular complaints made via more traditional channels. So why are companies choosing not to prioritize one of the fastest growing customer service channels? According to this recent study, it’s a combination of fear and a lack of resources.
For most contact centers, social care – the term used to define customer care provided across social media channels - will eventually become a reality of day-to-day operations. While two years ago only five per cent of companies used social customer service, Gartner predicts that by 2015, peer-to-peer support projects will supplement or replace tier one contact center support in more than 40 per cent of the top 1,000 companies with a contact center. To date, it is evident that although there is an initial hesitancy to explore this new customer service channel, progressive companies are indeed responding to this need, ensuring that they are meeting these growing demands effectively and efficiently.
Making Social Care your Competitive Advantage
Social care offers a tremendous new customer service opportunity and businesses that engage are really seeing the benefits. When beginning to explore social care, the first concern companies often have is how to control the volume of online interactions and how to measure the results of these interactions. TELUS International, in partnership with Kenna Inc. and Oracle Corporation, has recently released a white paper examining how to handle the magnitude of support conversations and evaluating what metrics are best for contact centers to use to ensure social care programs are achieving or aligning with business goals and objectives.
Developing a Solid Strategy from the Get-Go
In developing a social care plan, contact centers first need to create a strategy for coping with the volume of conversations that will happen across social media channels. Initially, the incredible quantity of conversations may be overwhelming, but the real issue is how to properly filter these conversations.
The good news is that not all conversations require a response and listening platforms can help filter and prioritize relevant conversations while eliminating irrelevant or inappropriate “noise.” Ensuring that your company has sophisticated technology platforms that are able to automatically score posts based on relevance, urgency and influence will help weed out extraneous conversations and will maximize the amount of time your team can spend responding to your clients’ questions.
Dell is one example of a company that has made significant strides in finding ways to manage these conversations effectively and now handles up to 25,000 social conversations each day.
Channel Redirection
Another common challenge when introducing social care is the difficulty in tracking metrics as conversations bounce between multiple channels.
Ideally, customer questions are addressed in the social channel of origin. A dilemma arises however when customer issues are too complex or sensitive to solve in the channel of original contact. For example, on Twitter, responses must be 140 characters or less and therefore it may be necessary to move the conversation to another forum, such as online chat or voice.
We call this “channel redirection” and it does have its benefits: customers get a quick resolution to their complex problems, while companies route customers to agents with the right skills.
However, this approach can present new issues with regards to collecting metrics. How do you accurately measure performance when conversations take place in multiple channels? And how do you measure customer satisfaction when agents from different channels are involved?
Fortunately, technology can help solve these problems. Many social care solutions are available to extract, analyze and present performance data – but it’s still early and we can expect other solutions to be created in the future. This will be explored further in our next whitepaper.
Measuring Your Social Care Efforts
Once your social care plan is established and tools are in place to monitor and respond as needed, the next step is to evaluate the success of your social care team. While there are many key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you assess your team’s social care efforts, it is important to determine which metrics add the most value to your business. The three categories of social care metrics outlined in our social care white paper are:
1. Service measures
2. Quality measures
3. Effectiveness measures
A follow-up article will discuss how to measure the return on investment and prove the value of social care programs.
Final Word
The use of social customer service will only increase as consumers spend more time on social channels. Social media has opened a “back door” into customer service, forcing companies to formalize their approach. Ultimately, the key to success is a sound strategy from the start, the infrastructure to manage volume, and the right metrics in place that will effectively measure your success and areas for improvement in this growing channel.
The white paper, entitled ‘Measuring Social Media in the Contact Center – Metrics and ROI,’ is available to download here.
Author: Walter Van Norden
Walter Van Norden is director of marketing for TELUS International – a provider of customer care and contact center outsourcing solutions to global clients. TELUS International is the global arm of TELUS, a national telecommunications company in Canada with $10.5 billion in annual revenue and almost 13 million customer connections. Learn more at: telustinternational.com
*Maritz Research and evolve24 Twitter Study, September 2011