ACS (
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Alert), a Xerox Company, has long been a leading business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, with more than 20 years' experience in the industry. ACS' roster of more than 33,000 agents in 150 contact centers globally handle in excess of one million customer interactions every day in 20 different languages.
With this background, ACS is keenly attuned to changes in how consumers and businesses interact with each other. It has seen how the interaction channels have expanded and developed: from phone to include e-mail and the Web and from live agent to encompass automated voice response. It has responded with solutions that help its clients navigate successfully through them, connecting customers to their enterprises.
Acquired by Xerox in February, 2010, ACS is positioned to enable its clientele to successfully manage interactions over the newest channel, social media, also known as the social channel. This spring ACS rolled out Community as a Strategy, a suite of social CRM services that captures customer insights from social media sites to improve the service and responsiveness of any organization.
To obtain insights on the social channel and Social CRM TMCnet recently interviewed Mike Wooden, senior vice president market development, Business Process Solutions, ACS. Here is what he has to say on this market-critical topic:
TMCnet: What are you hearing from your customers regarding the need to serve the social channel?
MW: Organizations realize they need to leverage the social channel to increase sales
and to keep attuned to what their customers are saying. While sales and marketing through social media is difficult enough, tapping into the goldmine of customer feedback on blogs, online communities and social media sites like Facebook, YouTube (
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TMCnet: How are their customers using them to engage with their organizations? Customer service? Support? Buying goods and services?
MW: From our perspective and what we've experienced at ACS, social media channels are invaluable tools to provide customer service and support in revolutionary new ways.
The explosion of social media has lead to a fundamental shift in power between companies and customers. Consumers are finding their voice and sharing their opinions any way they can - rating and reviewing products, services, and companies; talking about brands and companies in communities of interest and more.
The dialogue between business and customer used to be a monologue, with the business doing the talking via advertising and marketing. Customers could provide feedback about products or services, but it wasn't immediate. And while their viewpoints may have reached company representatives, they weren't reaching other customers (or prospective customers).
Now that monologue has become a dialogue, and with 78 percent of consumers reporting that they trust the opinions of their peers more than all other information sources and advertising (according to a 2008 study by the Nielson Company.), companies that do not find ways to listen to, join in, steer and learn from these customer-controlled conversations through well-implemented social media strategies risk losing their customers and prospects to those that do.
TMCnet: Are companies' customers using social media/the social channel in addition to or is it reducing their interaction over other channels i.e. finding information out from peers, community sites, which is self-service as opposed to calling a contact center?
MW: Nearly 74 percent of consumers choose brands based on the customer experiences their peers share online, it's clear that there are huge benefits to be gained from using social media to enhance customer experience and extend brand reach and value.
By developing a complete social media strategy and integrating social networking technology into their existing CRM solution, companies can also:
* Maximize the value of customer interactions
* Provide a seamless customer service experience
* Reduce customer churn and maintain profit margins while providing a high level of responsiveness to customers
* Reduce costs by addressing issue before customers call
Most companies we talk to still don't know exactly how to utilize the social channel. They know they need to do something, but are unsure of what and how they need to do it. That's why they come to us.
ACS is helping organizations discover how best to integrate the social channel into their current operations. Exactly how that will evolve is still unknown because companies are struggling to fully leverage this channel. However, we believe social CRM will help reduce the interaction in the contact centers because we address the issues in the social media space.
TMCnet: What issues and challenges are rising in enabling CRM systems to incorporate social media/the social channel so that they become Social CRM? Discuss BI, contact center integration
MW: There are numerous tools on the market that address social media channels and those tools get more robust every day. We have not seen any systems implementation issues at ACS.
From a broader perspective, there is little risk. The only risk is working with a CRM partner who does not take advantage of social media.
For years the customer service industry relied on customer feedback to address service issues. That is very reactive and frankly outdated. Our solution is proactive. It harvests public comments on Facebook (
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Social media is the great equalizer. It is instant reality. With the abundance of mobile communications - access to social media is ubiquitous and it is instant and viral. Incorporating social media into enterprise CRM is not about spending more money, it is about transforming business
TMCnet: Describe your Social CRM solutions that you have or will be coming out with in response to the needs. What are some of the benefits of your approach?
MW: While all solutions are different based upon customer needs, they all start from the same foundation. ACS recently launched its new service, Community as a Strategy, which leverages advanced analytical technology to scour the Internet to find references about an organization, then aggregates those conversations from blogs and other social networks into a centralized database and reporting dashboard for review and possible action by social media call center agents.
ACS then helps organizations develop a social media strategy for call centers that will help cut costs and increase revenues through reduced call and e-mail volumes, increased first contact resolution, extended customer relationships and improved lead conversion rates.
Here is one example scenario: our services starts with creating the Facebook or Twitter presence and building fan bases. A consumer posts a question or comment on Facebook, Twitter or another social network site. Using analytic technology, our system finds that post that mentions the client or specific keyword, and brings it into a dashboard, which is monitored by a social media agent in a call center. The agent uses a knowledgebase database to research/answer or address the question or post. The agent has the option of answer 1 to 1 or 1 to many. The entire conversation is logged in our system. The agent (manually) or the system (automatically) can provide loyalty URLs for coupons and offers to continue to engage the consumer and community.