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Guest analysis: Turning Twitter, Facebook into customer service goldmines

Submitted by Social Media Influence on August 6, 2010 – 9:19 am22 Comments

Earlier this week, Nielsen reported the latest insight into our daily social networking habit: that 22.7 percent of our time spent on the web this past year has been on social networking sites, up from 15.8 percent a year ago. Add more time and more people and the implications are (not surprisingly) very clear: social networking has established itself as one of the fastest-growing and most used communication channels today. Combined with the explosion of our ‘always on’ mobile society this has cemented the Twitter’s and Facebook’s of the world as valuable customer service goldmines.

Not tapping into this channel effectively will leave retailers and businesses alike missing out significantly, argues Keith Pearce, Senior Marketing Director EMEA, Genesys-EMG, Alcatel-Lucent, who puts forward these four key business case points for social networking:

Point One: Product research goes social

Consumers are relying more than ever upon social networking sites to conduct their product research. Gone are the days when Google was the primary online shopping aid. Consumers have always been interested in what their families and friends are saying, and today, social networking sites make it easy to survey that collective feedback. What this means for retailers: not having a Facebook page and Twitter feed in the social networking era is the digital equivalent of not yet having a Yellow Pages listing!

Point Two: A customer service channel packed with potential

So, when it comes to social networking becoming a de facto component of the customer service mix, the question is not “if,” it’s “when”. There is mounting evidence that it’s a communications platform that’s perfectly suited to being an effective customer service channel, but with only a small window of time in which tapping into social networking’s potential will yield significant competitive advantage to businesses.

Point Three: Social networking customer service – to be or not to be?

That leaves companies with two choices. They can either sit on the sidelines, watching other companies stake out leadership roles on the social networking customer service front, or they can deploy applications, create Facebook pages and Twitter feeds and establish a foundation to connect with their customers – via a medium that they appear to love. In an era of digital communications, that’s really not much of a choice.

Point Four: Customer engagement at its most prolific?

The business case here is very simple. By bringing their customer service environments together with Facebook and Twitter, retailers can give customers an easy way to contact them. Most customers don’t carry phone numbers for the companies they do business with, and they’re not likely to seek out those numbers when away from their computers. Through social networks however, consumers can connect directly to a company’s Facebook page or Twitter feed from anywhere. By engaging customers where it’s most convenient for them, their experience is improved. Retailers that ignore the opportunity to connect with customers so effortlessly do so at their own peril.

Keith Pearce, a 15-year high-tech industry veteran,  has worked extensively in new and emerging technology markets for customer service technologies. As Senior Director of EMEA Marketing at Genesys, Keith leads all marketing activities for the company in the region.

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