social customer service: the next battleground
DESCRIPTION
Together with salesforce.com, this white paper lays out our strategy for social customer service and the need to realign technology and culture around the idea of becoming "customer obsessed."TRANSCRIPT
Social Customer ServiceThe Next Battleground
The AgileEnterprise
2
The AgileEnterprise
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the power of the customer
Your customers are mobile, connected,
and social. They are interacting with your
business in new and powerful ways. They are
empowered. This shift means that customer
service is playing a broader, increasingly
critical role in the battle for customer
mindshare, share of wallet, and brand value.
Companies who aren’t building a customer-
centric approach and working to provide the
highest quality customer experience are failing
to optimize their business and potentially
putting their organization’s very survival
in jeopardy.
Research points to the importance of investing
in building a customer service organization
that is agile and able to respond to customer
issues not only with speed, but with thoughtful
touches that provide that customer with value.
Customer service is the next battleground
in which companies must compete in
order to meet and exceed their customers’
expectations, or risk them taking their
business elsewhere.
To compete in this new battleground, forward
thinking organizations are looking to align both
their technologies and their culture around a
more social vision of service. They are arming
employees with tools that allow them to
collaborate across the customer lifecycle, and
transform every department and customer
touch into a high value communication that is
“customer obsessed.”
Bluewolf is working with our clients to align
their organizations around this powerful shift.
How does one transition from a “cost
to cover” model for customer service
to one that measures the overall “value
of service?”
What employee skills and corporate
culture must exist in a customer-
centric enterprise?
Helping clients answer these broader questions
enables them to fully develop a more social
approach to customer service.
the “value” of service
Traditional customer service metrics measure
time and money in hard and concrete
measures. But these measures, such as first
call resolution and average handle time,
no longer reflect the complete picture of
customer service since the traditional phone
channels typically do not—and should not—
exist as the single point of service. e-Service
technologies are being deployed to offload low
level service problems, and boost a customer’s
ability to find knowledge and answers directly
59% of customers will switch brands to receive better service.
Up to 85% of your business could be lost due to poor customer service.
73% of customers have spent more with a company because of a history of good customer service.
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themselves, also known as self-service
strategies. But beyond adding e-Service, a fully
optimized social service strategy is enabled by
multiple service channels, allowing customers
a choice to connect with companies where
they are, on their terms.
Customer service is also evolving through
the skilled use of social media monitoring
where companies are increasingly listening,
engaging, and responding to customers
outside the domain of their service desk. Social
media channels can no longer be ignored
for customer service. Not only should they
be an essential part of a company’s service
strategy, but social media monitoring offers
powerful new ways for organizations to identify
new revenue opportunities, understand how
customers are connecting with a product or
brand, and how to quickly respond to a wide
range of product or service problems.
When used effectively, responding to
customers through social media channels
allows companies to take credit for their
outstanding customer service in a very
public forum. They can even turn customers,
and their broader network of connections
and followers, into powerful advocates
for their company and brand. In this new
world, customer service metrics must
evolve to measure social metrics such as
customer sentiment, conversation volume,
likes, retweets, and net promoter score, in
conjunction with more traditional metrics, to
gain the complete picture.
Another powerful metric for service
organizations to track and exploit is the
ability for your team to cross-sell or up-sell
customers to new or complementary products.
Turning a service call into a sales opportunity
can be tricky. When artfully executed (by
focusing on providing value to your customer),
a service call can turn a previous cost center
into revenue generating business and can
make service agents a hero, both to your
customer and to the organization.
creating a social service culture
Setting a new vision and metrics around
social service is an important step in
transforming customer service and enabling
your organization to succeed. But effective
execution depends on your organization’s
ability to realign technology around your
employees, empowering people with both the
tools and culture to service your customers
in new and more powerful ways. No longer
do customer service agents alone own “the
satisfaction” of customers. Every department
has a responsibility to the customer.
20% of the Fortune 500’s 100 largest companies engage with their customers on Facebook.
By 2014 refusing to communicate via social channels will be as harmful as ignoring emails or phone calls is today.
TRADITIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE METRICS:
• Satisfaction metrics
• Defection rates
• First-call resolutions
• Average handle time
• Agent utilization
• Cost to service customer
EMERGING SOCIAL SUPPORT METRICS:
• Customer sentiment
• Self service usage
• Cross-sell/up sell rates
• Conversation volume
• Likes, retweets,
+1s, etc.
• Net promoter score
Leading organizations are combining traditional service metrics with emerging social support metrics to gain a complete picture of customer engagement with their brand.
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Departments that used to operate more as
individual silos need to collaborate and ensure
the end customer experience is consistent and
positive across marketing, sales, operations,
and support.
Management’s task is to set a customer
focused culture in place. This must be backed
up with streamlined business processes and
technologies that allow every employee to
collaborate around improving the experience
for customers. The processes should remove
barriers, streamline handoffs, and allow
visibility into how to improve and optimize
performance ongoing.
A strong central CRM, such as Salesforce,
operating across the organization to track
a single system of customer truth, allows
everyone to be on the same page. When
supported in customer service by tools such
as Service Cloud, Chatter, and Radian6’s
Social Hub, your employees have the tools
they need to move and route customer
information, collaborate and respond quickly
around solutions, and communicate back to
customers both with speed and accuracy.
Technology is important. However, without
proper training, technology by itself will
not enable a social service transformation.
Change management is a critical piece of any
successful deployment, and impacts the end
user adoption of any new technology. Training
and aligning employees to these powerful
new technologies, and providing a defined
process for them to interact outside of their
departments early and often, is really what
helps set your service strategy apart.
Engaged, knowledgeable employees
consistently deliver a better customer
experience. This translates directly to a
company’s bottom line, through both cost
savings due to lower customer attrition rates,
but also through new sales, from either
effective cross selling or customers choosing
to spend additional money with brands that
provide a consistent, high quality customer
experience. When employees feel empowered,
they can take ownership over the customer
interactions they have and work to establish a
deeper customer connection. They can make
your customer more successful and engaged
with your organization.
When organizations break down departmental
silos, the entire organization can work together
to improve each customer touch point. When
employees are engaged and empowered
3x as many internal resources are necessary to acquire a new customer than retain one.
Engaged, knowledgeable employees deliver a better customer experience and close 33% more deals.
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around a common purpose and given the
tools and training to streamline their efforts,
your organization will be able to propel your
business forward and compete in the new
social service battleground.
choosing a partner
Companies looking to reap the benefits
discussed in this paper should understand that
success rests upon not only selecting the right
technology, but also the right partner to help
transform your organization. Business process
expertise and technical competence play an
important role, but of equal importance is
the cultural fit with an organization. When
selecting a consulting partner, be sure that
partner has a proven process to help you
establish your implementation requirements,
time-lines, and cost upfront. Also, look for a
proactive approach that identifies behavioral
and organizational factors that may impact
adoption. A true partner will listen carefully
and have the expertise to build a solution that
maps to your unique organizational challenges
and one that employees will actually use.
about bluewolf
Bluewolf has a dedicated consulting practice
around helping companies transform their
customer service desks. Our proven approach
and methodology help organizations set
their vision, implement that vision through
a combination of technology and business
process, and align their employees and culture
to this change.
As a global agile consultancy, Bluewolf
provides consulting services across the
customer life cycle, IT resourcing, managed
services and training. Trusted by businesses
in diverse industries, Bluewolf is translating
today’s unique business environment into
opportunities for growth. With Bluewolf,
businesses are able to deliver results that
benefit the customer, the workforce, and the
bottom line.