When social media first appeared on companies’ radar, most of them really didn’t know what to do with it. They understood they needed to keep a Facebook page and see what happened on it. They understood they needed to monitor Tweets and perhaps craft some of their own.
What they didn’t understand is which department was best suited to handle social media. Many companies mistakenly put it into the hands of the marketing department. Smart companies quickly realized that since social media is really another customer contact channel, it belongs in the contact center.
As this realization grows, many companies are turning to contact center platform providers who have been optimizing their solutions to maintain a social networking presence.
Customer contact and workforce optimization solutions provider Aspect this week launched its Unified IP 7.1 product (codenamed Tiger Shark), an extension of the Unified IP 7 family that powers Aspect’s multichannel interaction solutions for customer contact.
Aspect’s Unified IP 7 family includes features that address what many companies say is the most challenging business capability – effectively managing and delivering a differentiated customer experience in the light of consumer demand for expanded choices in communication channels such as social media.
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The Unified IP 7 platform offers a feature known as Aspect Social Media Channel Integration, which makes it easy for companies to pull social media management into the contact center – where it belongs – and apply workflow rules, call center performance analytics and workforce optimization capabilities to social media-based communications.
Aspect Social Media Channel Integration was created to address a broad need in the contact center market. According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Aspect, 58 percent of enterprise customer service strategy managers rate their organizations from poor to average in this area, admitting that in comparison to other business capabilities, social media is where they are least proficient.
In addition to the Social Media Channel Integration, release 7.1 builds in additional flexibility and efficiencies for inbound multichannel contact handling to minimize customer time and effort. The solution allows customers to deliver consistent experiences across all communications channels creating a single experience continuum from self-service through assisted service.
Additional new features specific to release 7.1 include expanded compliance capabilities for proactive outreach to help clients comply with recent government regulatory requirements and avoid fines; and aggressive quality and performance investments to help satisfy customer expectations for product stability and resiliency.
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