Blog entries tagged with response

All entries tagged with “response”

The Pulse of Social Media

Posted by Yasmin Parsloe on Tuesday Jul 1, 2014 2:41 pm

Change is coming for the customer service world. A recent study found 50 percent of consumers prefer using social media to reach their service provider than calling a contact center. Long gone are the social media skeptics as large, growing companies turn to these outlets for customer engagement, lead generation and brand development.

Amdocs found using social media as a platform for customer service is beneficial for multiple reasons: one, it cuts down on call center costs, and two, it improves the customer experience by boosting engagement. Emerging software connects customers’ social media identities to their profiles stored in the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Using and managing the data from social media outreach, companies are able to analyze trends and media shouts, identifying and resolving problems in just moments.

Contact Center software like Five9 is constantly introducing new technology that includes social media integration and social engagement tools. To prove that social media is here to stay – Five9’s Summer Release 2014 raised $73 million.

In a study by BI Intelligence, they found that social activity is the top internet activity. This means that Americans spend more time on social media than any other major internet activity – including email. Of that time, 60% of social media is accessed on smartphones and tablets, not desktop computers. Of the social media networks, Facebook attracts roughly seven times the engagement that Twitter does, meaning that user interaction on Facebook is more influential.

Here are some key facts regarding social media in the customer service world and correlating tips to improve the consumer experience:

Speedy Response: 52 % of consumers expect a response within 30 minutes of their social media contact, but only 24 % of service providers say they respond within that timeframe.
Invest in a CRM system with innovative social media software: 64 % of customers say they would be willing to share their social identity with their service provider, in return for better service and 48 % would like to receive relevant, personalized offers from their service provider via social media.
Link customers to their virtual identity: There’s still plenty of room for improvement in the social media world – 93 % of service providers say they cannot identify customers from their social media profiles and 64 % of service providers do not store social media interactions in their CRM database.

“When people take to Twitter or Facebook to ask questions, or worse yet, complain about their service provider, that’s an opportunity the service provider can take to proactively resolve that customer’s issue – if they know that customer’s real identity.”
- Rebecca Prudhomme, VP Product and Solution Marketing at Amdocs

For more information on customer service via social networks, check out the infographic below.

Click to Enlarge Image