Social media is arguably one of fastest-emerging new customer interaction channels (the other hot ones are mobile self-service apps). Yet like the other channels contact center agents must be trained on it and their performance must monitored for quality and performance.
To obtain insight into social media characteristics and on quality monitoring for it TMCnet recently interviewed Connie Smith (News - Alert), president of SpotOn Enterprises and consultant with performance/quality management firm Envision. Connie has been involved with contact center operations in various roles for more than 20 years, has written numerous articles and white papers and spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide. She recently hosted a webinar on social media sponsored by Envision.
“Social media creates a new wave of opportunities for businesses to engage with customers,” said Smith. “As with any new technology, in order to fully leverage the opportunities social media creates, contact centers need to develop deep understanding of its idiosyncrasies and mechanics, integrate it into their existing practices for quality and performance monitoring, and empower agents to take full advantage of the fastest growing communication channel.”
TMCnet: What roles should the contact center and the enterprise should play in responding to social media?
CS: I believe the logical ownership, or at least point of first contact, belongs within the contact center. Social media is a customer interaction channel and that’s what contact centers do best, manage customer interactions. There are no other departments within the enterprise that are as equipped with the workforce, routing and reporting capabilities.
I hate to date myself but I remember when electronic transmissions (e-mails) were first introduced and we couldn’t imagine how we would blend those into our “call” centers… but we did and we did it beautifully! Social media is no different. Technologies will and are making their way to market to help us monitor, track, route a report on this newest channels. Best practices are being forged in the areas of ideas, process, procedure and responsibilities from companies such as IBM, Zappos, Comcast (News - Alert) and Starbucks. It will all come together and I believe for the most part it will live in the contact center.
TMCnet: Isn’t social media media? Doesn’t it take contact center agents from the realm of semiprivate 1-to-1 conversations to an open public sphere where they are acting as spokespeople – no different than a PR rep, attorney or senior executive – and taking on a much greater burden for brand imaging and having to think fast and accurately to comments?
CS: Yes that’s true but what perfect timing. Gen Xrs and Millennials are now entering into our workforce and are expert at this form of media. They live and breathe it daily! They are well educated, great multitaskers and are collaborative by nature. We need to provide them with brand knowledge and training and let them go to work! Without this burden they would likely get bored, be under-challenged and hate being tied to their umbilical cords (headsets).
TMCnet: Which types of comments and proactive tasks should be directed to/managed by corporate communications, legal and marketing and which should go to/be taken care of by contact centers and why?
CS: I believe that it depends on your type of business and your corporate culture. There is a big difference between the types of social media conversations taking place around Zappos then there are with Bank of America. Anytime you add in businesses who are regulated or held accountable there needs to be extra steps to ensure compliancy and accuracy.
TMCnet: Can one readily gateway and triage social media comments and if so, how?
CS: Yes, I do believe the contact center can be the gateway and triage social media interactions. The first thing the entire enterprise (including contact center) needs to do is to identify what types of social media conversations are taking place. This is similar to what we have done to identify “types of calls” in a contact center today. Take an airline reservation center for instance. They have multiple call types such as new reservations, existing reservations and reconfirming reservations.
For social media you may decide that there are conversations around brand, customer service and support, products, engineering, research and development, public relations and marketing. Next identify subject matter experts (SMEs) that can assist you with conversations and begin building a knowledge base for future conversations. These SMEs can help build your knowledge base but they can also be your source for escalating the prickly conversations. (By the way, another reason why social media belongs in the contact center is because studies are starting to show that the majority of social media conversations are around customer service and support.)
TMCnet: Are firms properly selecting, training and equipping their contact center agents for this new, arguably risky and highly visible new role? What skills should they assess, train and then monitor performance for?
CS: I have seen a lot of centers select their most seasoned and trusted reps to start communicating. They may or may not however, be the most talented in this interaction channel. Social media reps need to have good writing skills, have experience in conversing in social media in their personal lives, understand the electronic language, that is, laugh out loud (lol), have a great sense of company ownership and understand the corporate culture.
TMCnet: How do you best quality monitor social media interactions?
CS: The same way you do with the other channels such as telephone and e-mail. Identify what your goals and objectives are for communicating in this channel. Perhaps it is acknowledging and resolving customer issues, or maybe educating customers on your products and services or identifying areas for improvement? Then identify skills that you can evaluate and coach to that will help you reach your goals. Place these skills on a “Social Media Evaluation Form”. You might be surprised to learn how many skills are similar to telephone and/or e-mail. A Social Media Evaluation Form can include categories and skills as such as
- Social media handling (greeting, use of knowledge base, engage SME, closing)
- Expertise (customer education, policies and procedures)
- Resolve (identify customer needs, offer appropriate solutions)
- Customer experience (professionalism, active listening, acknowledgement, appreciation, written tone)
TMCnet: What other challenges do you see with social media and what methods that contact centers should adopt in response?
CS: One of the biggest challenges I see is that these interactions are not “one and done”. What I mean by that is if a contact center agent engages in a social media conversation they must monitor the conversation for a response as chances are they may need to stay in the conversation as it goes back and forth. Another challenge is trusting your agents to engage in conversations or to know when to escalate them as appropriate. And then there is the question which technologies to utilize to allow you to find and manage this new channel.
TMCnet: Peer service/support via social media has emerged as a new separate new channel. The benefits are lower costs, greater speed of reply and customer authenticity. The risks are that the information and advice may not be accurate and could do more good than harm. How do you best facilitate peer service/support to maximize its advantages while minimizing the side effects while controlling costs?
CS: I believe you need to monitor these “crowd sourcing” sites like mixx, newsvine and digg as well and interject yourself and your company into these conversations when relevant i.e. inaccurate information is being provided.
TMCnet: How do you see contact centers change/evolve with social media? For example do you imagine – which some firms are now doing – creating special teams with individuals' names and faces and giving those employees identities so to create and build relationships with customers?
CS: Those forward thinking companies will do just that and they will reap the rewards! Customer loyalty is built on three pillars:
- Perceived alternatives (Who the customer perceives as their best choice to be doing business with)
- Level of engagement (How engaged they are with the company they are doing business with)
- Critical episodes (To what satisfaction level critical episodes are resolved in)
Conversing in the social media channel has huge impact on all three of the above! Oh, and did I mention that loyalty leaders grow on average twice that as their competitors!
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Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell