It was once said, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. This saying holds true when it comes to the new era of customer service we’ve entered into.
The other day, I ran across an article on Information Management’s website that harkened me back to an issue we were addressing last year. The title of the article – “Social Monitoring Minus Interaction Misses Out on Potential” – first caught my attention because it’s hard to believe that most brands are still stuck in the “convincing” stage of social customer service. Here at LiveOps, we are in 100% agreement with Senior Editor Justin Kern’s statement on the importance of moving past social media monitoring, but why are brands so slow to engage on social media?
In his article, Kern references a report from Hypatia Research Group that found only 246 out of the 1,100 global organizations surveyed had social media software for customer service that enabled them to go beyond social media customer monitoring. Leslie Ament of Hypatia Research states that while the anecdotal information social media monitoring provides may be interesting, “if I were a CMO and I had to report to the board on why I spent six-figures on a social media monitoring system, I probably would not have my job for very long.”
What’s missing is the ROI from social customer service. What will it take to convince companies to move beyond investing in simple monitoring tools and truly recognize the benefits of a solution that provides advanced customer engagement features? If a customer compliment or complaint via phone doesn’t fall on deaf ears, why should a Tweet – especially when that Tweet plays into ROI in that it carries three times more viral word-of-mouth (WOM) influence than a phone call (source: American Express)? CMOs must recognize that social customer service ROI will be realized when they partner with customer service and contact centers across people, process and technology.
Case in point: A recent joint study conducted by LiveOps and Dr. Natalie Petouhoff evaluated three companies, the challenges they faced when it came to customer service, and the ROI on using an integrated agent desktop with native social customer service engagement capabilities. The end result? Agent productivity increased 25% to 50%. Agent “happiness” or agent “experience” improved 25% to 50%. First contact resolution, average interaction handling time, customer churn and customer lifetime value (CLTV) all improved significantly. One company estimated $8M in incremental profit a year based on agent productivity savings and incremental revenue associated with turning negative WOM into positive customer experiences and increased CLTV from proactive social engagement. That ROI speaks volumes!
So how can your company go from ordinary to extraordinary? It’s simple. Keep up with your customers, not only by going where they go, but also by engaging with them there. Become an extraordinary company by going that extra mile. I encourage you to visit our website to find out more about how you can leverage LiveOps to deliver extraordinary social, cross-channel customer service: www.liveops.com/engage.
Don’t just listen. Engage!
