For many retailers getting a social media strategy in place in the contact center is not a top priority even though a new report has found that 75% of consumers have posted a negative comment on a social media site after experiencing a poor customer experience.
In fact, even with a high number of shoppers taking their claims to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, 70% of companies admit to having “little understanding” of the social media conversations happening around their brand, according to the “How to Socially Enable Your Contact Center” report from Oracle.
Social media should no longer be solely looked as a marketing tool for your brand, it should be used as a tool to interact with your customers and a place to offer great customer experience, according to the report.
“Poor customer experiences result when channels and processes remain in separate siloes. The social channel – while the newest channel for many companies – must integrate with the people, processes, technology, and other channels currently used to connect with and satisfy customers,” the report said.
Getting social in the contact center is one of the best ways to boost customer service and the customer experience. Still not convinced? Here are three reasons from Oracle on what you will gain by getting social in the contact center:
It Allows You to Listen and Respond Across All Channels. Just as consumers expect to shop with your brand 365 days a year, 24-hours a day, they also expect to interact with your brand that way as well. A socially-enabled contact center will leverage social interactions to build stronger relationships with customers, deliver consistent and relevant brand experiences across all channels, and most importantly, allow for a better conversation between customers and brand employees.
It Allows You to Be Where the Shoppers Are. Retailers need to take advantage of sites such as Facebook and Twitter which both have the potential to reach countless of consumers. Retailers need to offer the full set of social interaction options in which your customers are accustomed to when contacting the traditional contact center including self-service, peer-to-peer service, and agent-assisted service. However, these interactions must be monitored and analytics must be captured and recorded just as your traditional contact center interactions are.
It Allows You to Build a Community. Let’s face it; your customers can be the source of knowledge about your products, your services, and your brand in general. This is why you want to enable customers to help each other out as well by allowing them to post and answer comments on your Facebook page and openly support customer conversations on your social media sites.
However, if your customer community is not answering a question in a reasonable amount of time on your social media sites, you need to jump in and reroute the thread to a contact center agent for a resolution.