Social media sites like Facebook (
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Alert), LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are rapidly becoming part of our everyday interactions. They are also developing into invaluable methods to enable more effective customer service and support, nip problems like inaccurate information, and to identify marketing opportunities by listening to customers’ voices.
Yet how many organizations, including contact centers, whose employee use social media off-hours and increasingly at work with customers, utilize this tool to enable productive workplaces?
Global business process outsourcing, or “BPO,” firm TeleTech is one of the few, Richard Herbst, vice president, Learning and Leadership Development, said. While most companies are using social media platforms to interact directly with customers and the public, he says, far too many are still shunning the tools when it comes to employees’ use. Even for internal collaboration and information sharing.
In contrast, TeleTech, which has 48,000 employees or ‘associates’ across 77 delivery (including contact) centers in 17 countries knows the value of real-time information sharing, says Herbst. And it is using social media to enable such sharing across its network. It built and went live in 2008 with a collaborative information-filtered and social media platform overseen by cross-functional group of managers that keeps their assigned internal communities active and engaged in ongoing discussions.
So, how does a global company take the established concept of collaboration and enable the success with social media tools?
First, by understanding the critical balance between strategy creation and execution, explains Herbst. TeleTech created a team that developed a cohesive strategy that was tied directly to overall corporate objectives, and then implemented projects that would deliver both short- and long-term results. It drew on a “wikinomics” perspective that emphasized information sharing as a real opportunity to not only contribute to organizational objectives, but to have team members at all levels involved in the development of best practices.
In doing so, TeleTech’s program:
* Saved costs while providing employees with access to live, real-time experts worldwide
* Captured, better distributed, and continuously improved training and knowledge sharing
* Delivered quality improvement leadership to the front lines, using ideas and stories from current customer interactions, benefiting both associates and clients
“The potential of mass collaboration is not a new idea, and at TeleTech, it has been part of our global vision for years,” Herbst said. “While social media tools are more available and popular than ever, social media itself is not an end or an objective. Rather, it is another medium by which we can achieve our company’s goals.”
TeleTech had several hurdles to overcome in implementing its social media program. Initially, many concerns were raised about how social media might ‘get in the way’ of how TeleTech does business, rather than enable it. This opened up many more questions, says Herbst. What would we do with social media? How would we ‘manage’ it? What benefits does it bring?
As with many companies, direction and strategy for service delivery traditionally comes from the top-down and TeleTech is no different. However, by embracing collaboration using social media tools, the firm accepted the idea that the communications and information flow would become more ‘ground-up.’ Senior management’s role had to change to a support role that enabled key initiatives and removed hurdles where necessary.
“Over the last 12 months, we’ve learned that – not surprisingly – it’s far more than finding the right platform and flipping a switch,” Herbst said. “It’s really a shift in business philosophy that starts by turning traditional business hierarchy upside down.”
This also meant understanding and supporting an organized collaborative culture. Yet TeleTech one big advantage right out of the gate. Today’s associates have an inseparable connection to technology, Herbst said. They are familiar with and use social media and networking in their everyday lives. By engaging them, the firm could and did capitalize on their existing understanding of social media conventions in building its solution. That included building in information management tools to help users sift and organize their incoming data flow.
“Like our employees, anyone who has spent time online knows that the true free-for-all flow of information that characterizes some Internet sources leaves much to be desired,” Herbst said. “Without some sort of filter and organization, you can easily be inundated with information that is off-topic, inaccurate, too lengthy, or just too much. We knew our plans and our people had to do just that.”
To make and keep the collaboration happen and successful TeleTech created a cross-functional group of community managers responsible for keeping their assigned communities active and engaged in ongoing discussions. They work with key stakeholders including clients, executives, brand ambassadors, and front-line associates to encourage conversation, support their communities’ needs, build relationships with community leaders, and push content from one community to another.
In addition, it embraced the well-recognized structure of most online communities, in which different people play different roles. Following the ‘90-9-1’ premise, it segmented its online communities into creators, contributors, and readers. By proactively addressing the needs of members of each segment, Herbst said, it raised their level of engagement and helped them to embrace the concept. This also allows employees with different skill sets and in different locations to share knowledge, ask questions, and interact virtually.
TeleTech, acknowledging that the associates are typically the holders of critical information, but knowing their schedules and responsibilities afforded them little time for conversation, launched the social media platform at the team-leader rather than at the associate level. However, while the basis of the communities was supervisor-centric, the tools and workspaces were designed as enablers. These capture associate input, develop the relationship between associate and supervisor, and increase associates’ productivity while simultaneously maximizing the use of supervisors’ time to reduce attrition and improve performance.
TeleTech also had to prove the program. Going back to the original skepticism, says Herbst, what is all this effort worth? Can it really enable our business success? His team knew that nothing would remove skepticism and break down barriers faster than showing how social media can reduce day-to-day pain points.
In response his team selected two sites based on factors such as geography, client support, and management support. At each site, they identified key local problem areas where social media could be surgically deployed to make a positive impact. They conducted 60-day pilot projects to evaluate what was working and what was not. They matched postings around a particular topic and observed the business metric over the life of the pilot to see if it really moved as much as needed.
“Did the pilots meet our objectives?” Herbst said. “Indeed. In one example, margins improved more than 40 percent for a single location in the first month alone. In a second example, team-led communities of associates developed and shared best practices on a particular activity that is traditionally a very time-intensive component of call flow. They improved upon this knowledge with colleagues via social media. What started out as tens of thousands of dollars in savings in one location turned into a nearly half-million-dollar financial boost.”
In these examples, the programs pay off in very apparent ways, he points out. To continue this trend, TeleTech knows that its team members must continue to feel a sense of ownership and commitment if they are to be truly collaborative. While some see this type of collaboration as another increase to their work load, or an undesirable level of tracking and accountability, the most successful employees and leaders look at it as a way, he says, to shape the evolution of the company and share positive personal experiences.
“Social media is more than just another technology tool,” Herbst said. “Its rise is fueled by the natural fact that human beings seek to be part of communities where they can share, learn, and communicate with like-minded people. In other words, as long as people have the means to create online communities, then it is inevitable that social media will be part of the corporate landscape.
“Nevertheless, just being in the game is not enough. By tying their social media strategy to current business objectives, companies like TeleTech can take a practical approach to optimizing global operations, improving performance, increasing teamwork, attracting top talent and creating new product/service offerings.”
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Kelly McGuire
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