Social Customer Service: The Pivotal Driver of the Social Enterprise
    LiveOps CMO, Ann Ruckstuhl, with social strategist and evangelist, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff at CRM Evolution LiveOps CMO, Ann Ruckstuhl, with social strategist and evangelist, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff at CRM Evolution

We have enjoyed our recent collaborative efforts with prominent social strategist and evangelist, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, and today, we strengthened our partnership with her even further. At CRM Evolution 2012 in New York City, I was fortunate to host a session with her on “Social Customer Service: The Pivotal Driver of the Social Enterprise.”

At the beginning of the session, we asked the audience a question that many companies ask themselves: Who actually owns social media? Is it the marketing, PR, sales, or communication department? We followed that question up with more questions: What if those departments worked together in identifying, engaging with, and retaining social customers? And what if the customer service department was the driver of the social customer? LiveOps, itself, challenges customer service to take the lead in creating a cross-functional team to turn social customer service into a strategic asset and differentiator for the company.

My colleague, Sanjay Mathur, stated in his last blog post that in order for organizations to take on this radically new breed of customer – the social customer – they, too, need to make a radical change. That change is collaboration. Internal teams must work together, more now than ever before, to deliver customer service the way customers want it. This means marketing, PR, sales, and communication departments need to coordinate effectively with customer support to ensure customer issues are managed properly. In turn, customer support needs to make sure they are tightly integrated with the influx of customer feedback on social channels. If the relationship between departments is efficient, and they are armed with the right technology and process to work together to manage customer interactions residing in the contact center, customers become happier and the company becomes happier.

Ann Ruckstuhl, Chief Marketing Officer, LiveOps Ann Ruckstuhl, Chief Marketing Officer, LiveOps