Shaping Customer Service in the Social Era

I love talking about collaboration almost as much as I like doing it.  When people come together, one idea spawns others and before you know it, greatness erupts into the world.

The reason social media is transforming business today (and in years to come) is because it allows us to team together in ways we could never achieve in our traditional, proximity-based societies or companies.  And that includes collaborating to meet customer needs.

Your customers know as much or more about the “real world” use of your products than your service reps or even product engineers might know. 

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Satisfying the customer – Quoted by Nearshore America

I’m a proponent of empowering call center reps to service customers in more valuable, meaningful ways.  Recent discussions in other customer service forums brought me to the attention of Tarun George, a writer for Nearshore America.

Check out Tarun article Forget about Handle Time, What About Satisfying the Customer? on NearshoreAmerica.com.  He starts off:

The call center landscape is changing fast. Because of increased competition and brutal cost pressures in the last year, client retention and consequently client satisfaction are more important now than they’ve ever been.  But are companies changing their call center practices to reflect that?

Click here to find the answer…and some of my thoughts on the topic.

Unleash the Creative Power of Your Call Center

Ask most people what they think of their experience with the call center and the common answer will be "frustration." First they’re forced to wade through an automated system that impedes their ability to connect with a real person. And when customers do get to a real person, the customer experience is often less than satisfactory, even when their issue is resolved.

It would be easy to blame the reps. But take a step back and ask yourself "how much of the service problem is systemic, resulting from managerial over-control of the customer engagement process?"

 

This article is featured on Customer Management IQ. Click here to read it in its entirety.

Who owns the customer relationship?

I struggle with this question.  Crowd wisdom in Social CRM (SCRM) circles says in today’s world the customer owns the relationship.  That’s the power of social media.

True confessions, though, I’m not completely comfortable with this idea.

The reason? The inequality in a relationship where one party holds more power than the other.

Some will say the point of social media is to give customers power back.  Yes, it’s true – and it’s one of the great things about social media.  However, I also have concerns about the pendulum swinging too far to the left, in which case a new problem arises.

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Take ownership of your customer relationships

Who owns prospects and customers in your company?  Do you know?  Just as importantly, would folks in other departments give the same answer?

You need "yes" answers to all those questions or you'll mismanage your customer relationships.

To get to "yes," your customer-facing teams need good definitions of your company's Customer Life Cycle and Rules of (Customer) Engagement.

Let’s dish on strategies to propel your company's business success by spring boarding on well-defined customer relationships  – and then layer in the technology tools for managing the customer.

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Rackspace Email – Integrating customer service & interaction via multi-channels

Bob Warfield recently wrote a article on the need to integrate Customer Service and customer interaction.  Additionally, he also pointed towards the very real possibility of how sometimes being too social can be the wrong move for a company.

Bob’s observation highlights the customer service challenge of finding the right mix between offering self-service options mixed with help from real people via phone and via also social media channels.  It’s about providing service in ways customers want and need.

Circling around all this social challenge, companies also still need to be cost-effective in managing their businesses.

Break it down and the challenge is about finding a balance between business need and user/customer needs.  That’s a driving motivator behind whole Social CRM movement.

Rackspace Email (formerly Mailtrust) is an excellent example of a company who is successfully hurdling the challenge as they offer excellent service delivered by a variety of avenues.

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Twitter API extends value of Salesforce’s Service Cloud

This week, Salesforce.com announced the marriage of Twitter with Salesforce.  A Twitter API to Service Cloud, Salesforce’s customer service product, will allow companies capture Twitter conversations, import them into Salesforce, and take action on the micro-conversations.

Some hailed Salesforce’s announcements with big woo hoos while others poked at the news. I saw at least one blogger lament the coming of advertising intrusions into the Twitterverse.

We at Intellicore Design Consulting think this is good news. Let’s dish about what it means to customer service a la Salesforce.

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