How should Contact Centres integrate Social Media? [infographic]

The challenge for managers of contact centres in the era of the social media empowered customer

Integrating social media into the Contact Centre is rather a daunting task, but with demand for social customer service growing at its current rate the time to think about it is now.

Social customer service platform, Sentiment, has put together this handy infographic (below) that outlines some of the biggest challenges contact centres face.

We will also be discussing approaches to manage this issue on January 15th 2014, when our Social Times CEO Luke Brynley-Jones will be hosting a webinar on ‘How Should Contact Centres Integrate Social Media?’. He’ll be joined by an excellent panel, including Martin Hill- Wilson (Brainfood Consulting), Luke Porter (Contact Centre Social) and Dom Sparkes (Tempero). You can register for the webinar.

I’ve picked out some of the highlights from the research in the infographic in this post:

Main challenges for Contact Centres

1. Ditching the legacy system

It’s easy to understand why a Contact Centre that’s heavily invested in a legacy system would be reluctant to change, but looking 2-3 years down the line, organisations that have adopted a fully blended, multi-channel approach to customer service will find themselves in a far better position.

1 in 3 social media users already prefer to contact brands using social media than the phone and with this looking set to increase, brands that are able to talk to customers on their preferred channel and switch between different channels, will reap the benefits.

2. Justifying the expense

Social customer service costs money, but it’s not hard to justify the expense. It can deflect phone calls, increase customer retention and help brands to reach out to new customers.

On average, a customer that’s had a positive experience of social customer care will tell 42 people about it.

3. Scaling up

Currently customer service accounts for just 5-10% of overall service provision, but with this set to increase brands need to plan their budgets accordingly. The other challenge of scaling up is that brands will need more staff operating very efficiently, whilst still offering a personal service and maintaining a human touch. Frank Eliason, SVP Social Media at Citi, referred to this challenge as 'scalable intimacy'.

4. Measuring the results

Most customer service league tables that I see knocking around seem to measure response rate and response time as the be-all and end-all of social customer service, but what good is a quick response if it doesn’t actually help the customer?

We need to consider the average handling time of responses, the cost savings as a result of call deflection, customer satisfaction, sentiment and net promoter scores.

5. Finding the right skills

This is a biggie. Customer service staff are used to dealing with conversations in private, yet on social media conversations are suddenly taking place in the public domain for all the world to see. Even those that are great on the phone may not be suited to social customer service as it requires a whole new skill-set.

If they are to succeed on social media staff need to be genuine, have excellent writing skills (and be able to write concisely), have a good sense of humour and feel perfectly at home online.

Thanks to Jeremy Taylor for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Jeremy is a Social Media Consultant at UK based social media agency and event organiser, Our Social Times. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.