It amazes me that 70% of companiesstill ignore what their customers are saying on Twitter.
However, I also know firsthand that call center executives do not want social activity monitoring to lead to more tickets or cases in their tracking systems.
Making your call center social doesn’t have to be hard. One of the main tenants of deploying the social enterprise is being part of your customers’ conversations. Salesforce.com provides the tools to do this, but not all companies know how.
In this blog, I hope to share some best practices to address the fear of bringing social to your support center.
#1. Create dedicated support channels on social sites like Facebook and Twitter
Your call center has a dedicated phone number so why wouldn’t you have a dedicated site for your customers to socially discuss their issues?
If a customer posts to the general corporate site, “conversations” should be routed to the support team or to a community manager who can guide the customer to the correct channel.
Salesforce.com’s social hub combines the power of Radian6 and salesforce.com’s Service Cloud. Instead of filtering conversations, community managers create rules based on sentiment and if statements, to automatically create a support case. The cases can then be properly placed into the correct queue much like it was a customer email.
#3. Use Klout score to assign priority
The Radian6 engagement console allows community mangers to pull in Klout scores. This is very important since Klout scores are calculated by a user’s influence on the social community. Getting in front of an issue with a customer that has a high Klout score can potentially deflect a large number of cases from the call center. Not only will followers see the answer to the issue, but they will also see any positive responses by the customer. This will also help in situations where a person with a high Klout score retweets a post by someone with a low Klout score.
Still afraid of bringing social to your support center? Let me know your reservations.
As the Service Cloud practice lead at Model Metrics, I tend to take a more critical look at a company’s service and support process when I’m a customer. My recent attempt to purchase home Internet service left me scratching my head.
I started out the company’s website as usual. After finding a special online only deal, I selected the service I wanted to buy. The process was very intuitive until I got to the final step.
Instead of the standard “Complete Your Transaction” button we’ve all become accustomed to, this site’s button asked me to “Click to chat with an agent”. Once I clicked, I was routed to a chat support agent who instead of completing my transaction, asked for my social security number a second time.
The agent explained that while I had provided the number during the purchasing process it had simply been for a credit check and was not retained on their site. I was uncomfortable providing this information in a web chat and offered to share the last 4 digits of my Social Security number for confirmation.
When this wasn’t enough, the agent offered to have their supervisor call me, which I agreed to. When the supervisor called, I offered to provide the last 4 digits of the social security number again to which they responded, “Hold on let me ask the agent helping you” (Hmm, was this really the supervisor?). Not having much faith in this transaction, I chose not to provide the number over the phone.
My only other option was to go into a local office to setup service. That great deal I had found online? Not available offline.
After, my interactions I received the following survey:
Not only are the questions too vague to be useful to the service provider, I didn’t understand question four. How much “work” should I have expected?
This company’s support process had not been well defined and actually required the use of every support channel.
It’s clear this company wants to use service and support as a differentiator, but have not taken the time to clearly define their processes and is inadvertently creating negative interactions with customers.
In a perfect world? This company could streamline their support by identifying a process flow for each of their interaction channels using the Salesforce.com Service Cloud. Next they can map their process to a solution:
Self-Service: Using the Salesforce.com Service Portal and Visual Workflow, a customer can log into the portal and use flow to walk the customer through the sign up process.
Chat: If a chat needs to be initiated, Salesforce.com’s Live Agent product can be used within the company’s website or portal to initiate a proactive or reactive chat session. Since the chat agents are using the same service cloud platform as the customer they would have insights into customer registration information.
Phone: In this case the company asked for my phone number, but if they were using the Service Cloud they would have access to my social profile, which would include my phone number. Utilizing CTI integration the agent would just have to click my phone number to dial out to me.
Field Support/In-Person: The Company’s staff that is not in the service center would have access to my “social profile” in the service cloud to see my interaction history. Here they can see the process I have been through and all my interactions.
According to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com there are 3 steps to becoming a social enterprise:
#1 Connect to public social networks
#2 Create a private social network
#3 Make your enterprise applications social
The social enterprise only works if you adopt all 3 steps, without that you will continue to have communication gaps.
Let’s break down how each step can be adopted…
Connect to public social networks
There are many social monitoring services available in the market, but only one links to your enterprise software. Radian6, recently acquired by salesforce.com, allows companies to monitor themselves on multiple social networks. Marketing departments can now see how their company is trending in order to make quick decisions based on customer interactions.
The service is just as important for service and support teams. It can highlight trends of the most influential people (tweeters) so agents can react to the individuals with the most clout in the social web. Quickly resolving issues for these individuals can make a positive influencer out of a naysayer.
Create a private social network
Again, there are many private social network solutions on the market, most notably Yammer. However only Salesforce.com’s Chatter is native within your enterprise software solution. Prior to using Chatter, I was an early adopter of several private social network solutions and the same issue always caused them to fail – they were disconnected. The toggling between email, CRM and social network tools became too much to keep up with. With Chatter, your company’s private social network sits within an application your employees are already using.
No longer is that remote worker in Boston limited to their own product knowledge or team’s support, now they can harness the minds of all their peers effortlessly across the organization. In the past, this may have been accomplished through clogging up email inboxes – now it can be done in short direct messages. If you ask most teenagers they don’t use email, why…because messaging is more social.
Make your enterprise applications social
Not only should your private network connect your employees’ voices quickly, they should be tied to a certain application. Salesforce.com’s Chatter is fully integrated to all aspects of their platform. Whether it’s a sales team communicating on account strategy or if it’s a support agent needing addition resources to solve a customer issue, linking a message to a particular situation gets everyone within the organization on the same page. The communication doesn’t stop there; it’s searchable and available to others when needed.
The social enterprise allows companies to play on the same field as their customers. The ability to communicate as fast as they can is no longer just important, it’s essential. The social enterprise is a shift and Model Metrics is supporting companies to deploy this vision to the enterprise. It’s no longer cool just to be in the cloud, you need to make it social.
If you get into a confrontation or disagreement with a family member in most cases you’re willing to forgive and forget. The same cannot be said for our relationships with our brands.
It's funny how we’re less likely to forgive brands or individuals representing a brand even though our interaction with them will be short and infrequent. In fact, 68% of the time, customer churn is caused by customers’ feelings of poor treatment (Source: TARP) and 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with an organization again (Source: Lee Resource Inc.).
Organizations now understand that customers do not forgive easily and it has started a new trend in customer service – using support teams to prevent customer churn and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
A well-run support team not only saves on operational costs, but also adds to the bottom line. Attracting a new customer costs 5 times as much as keeping an existing one (Source: Lee Resource Inc).Knowing we don’t forgive so easily helps to justify any upfront costs to keep customers happy. The cost of not keeping customers happy is significant. It takes 12 positive service experiences to make up for one negative experience (Source: “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner).
As customers, what are we willing to do in return for this happiness? We tell people. Happy customers who have their issue resolved tell 4 to 6 people about their experience (Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs, Washington, DC). This is more important that ever with wide reaching social media serving as today’s word of mouth.
As an organization, service and support budgets should not be overlooked. In fact, CTOs and CIOs should be looking at how they can move to Cloud 2 technologies. Cloud 2 allows companies to quickly ramp up their teams on scalable, easy to deploy platforms. Organizations suffering from low CSAT scores should look at what tools the team is using to support their clients. Out are the days of green screens, multiple systems, copy and paste; in are unified agent desktops with telephony integration and increased productivity.
Creating energy in a call center has always been a challenge. Of course you can give extra incentives for certain KPI's, but oftentimes those incentives result in only a temporary upswing in agent motivation and performance, and may even have adverse effects.
What if we looked at the entire idea of incentives differently? What if the call center became a game and the operators were the players? Gamification is making its way to the enterprise and it starts with the support center.
In order to participate in the game you'll need an avatar. Your avatar would participate in the game along with other agents. The concept of the game would be simple. Complete a mission – the agent’s task – and earn gems or badges.
Badges would be earned for helping a peer, successfully handling a certain number of cases in a row, receiving a thumbs up on a knowledge article, or handling a certain number of calls for the day. The badges would appear as they earn them and their peers would see them on their team’s leader board.
Gems would be earned for larger tasks or achievements such as employee of the month, receiving customer accolades or publishing a knowledge article. Gems could be used to purchase items for your avatar. Over the course of time, successful agents will have a more "blinged out” avatar representing their accomplishments.
Game achievements can socially be shared across the company, using salesforce.com’s Chatter, a free feature of the Service Cloud. Peers and members of the leadership team can "like" or comment on the agent’s success. The game provides a fun alternative for leadership, encourages peer-to-peer recognition and becomes a long term solution to increase call center productivity.
The average age of a call center worker is 23, so the adoption of new technology and a gaming culture is a natural fit, however in order to drive desired results the implementation must be handled with care. As a leader in cloud consulting Model Metrics is working with companies to integrate these solutions into feature rich support center solutions like salesforce.com's Service Cloud and adopt gamification into each company’s culture.
Sound far-fetched? Check out Bunchball – you'll be surprised to learn it's already happening. The possibilities are endless when you integrate gamification into Salesforce.com's Service Cloud.
What is clout? The term has been around for a long time and while the definition hasn’t changed, the meaning of clout has changed dramatically.
In 2004, if I had a bad experience in a restaurant and wanted to vent I would – in this order – call the manager, mention it to friends in passing and maybe post on a local blog or chat site.
If I had the same issue today, I would – in this order – tweet about it, post it on my facebook wall, tell a LinkedIn connection, Yelp a review, text my friends and finally, if I got around to it, contact the manager of the restaurant.
You can see how clout has changed! No longer is my clout limited to my face to face conversations, it is extended to my entire social network, made of up hundreds of friends, colleagues, and even perfect strangers. Companies can’t afford to “overhear” their consumers; we stopped communicating to you years ago and are telling everyone we know about your product or service. This new viral word of mouth happens in mass and today’s companies have no choice but to step in or be left behind.
Salesforce.com just announced its Service Cloud 3 platform along with the intent to purchase Radian 6. Why is this a big deal? The Service Cloud 3 platform allows companies to listen to these conversations and participate in real time from one platform via, phone, chat, email and social.
Designated agents can now monitor social websites and respond to customer issues – both positive and negative – from the cloud. These social messages have the same routing power as other communication channels and can be prioritized by YES, clout! Much like a customer having a rating or score based on their buying power, a person can also have a clout score to quickly measure their social influence on the web.
There are companies out there that have been monitoring social conversations on the web from the onset. But even these proactive companies are often disconnected from their support teams and participate in social conversations at random and on another platform.
Smart companies will build relationships with influencers who have high clout scores and the biggest influence on their brand. Listening to them and engaging them can help you increase awareness and help spread their message, not by word of mouth but by word of clout!
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