Utilizing Social Media Marketing within the Workforce Optimization process accelerates customer experience gains

This customer profile features a Fortune 500 clothing retailer, which includes a chain of popular women’s wear outlets and has multiple contact center locations in the eastern United States. They've been experiencing rapid growth and have added 5 new locations in the last 6 months. 

As their business grows the executive leadership team is most concerned with the quality of their brand that customers have come to love and expect. “Growth is great but maintaining that close personal touch with quality fare is our number one concern”, said the Director of Quality.

The retailer uses a state of the art Contact Center which accepts orders online and then customers can drop in and pick-up their merchandise at the nearest location. “The e-commerce store is what drives our business now to the brick and mortar. Customers expect their orders delivered quickly and accurately”, he added.

The contact center is built on leading communications technology and monitoring tools where orders are entered into the CRM (customer relationship management) software, from either the website or handled through the telephone, and immediately routed to the proper store location and designated for pickup as though customers ordered right off the rack.

Not only does the team of quality experts look to ensure order accuracy but they are also responsible for measuring the quality of the contact center interaction. Using a workforce optimization suite, the team plays back recorded events from phone calls, emails, web chats, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, SMS as well as any other active channels. The team of supervisors will then evaluate and score the events to ensure proper dialogue and resolution. The goal is to have their agents cultivate the ultimate customer experience.

The contact center supervisors also use social media monitoring tools to monitor their brand on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and respond when they can. The tools also provide metadata which can be used to improve performance and responsiveness.

For example, if a customer had a bad shopping experience at a local store, they might be inclined to make their next purchase online. 

However, in a worst-case but likely scenario the customer took to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction. 

The contact center’s social media monitoring tools detected the Twitter activity and issued a reply via Twitter from an available agent. The agent expressed an understanding of the customer’s issue, and told them normally there would not have been an issue. 

They assured the customer that the next time they entered the store, they would have a more satisfactory experience, and a 30% off coupon may help them get what they are looking for at a fantastic discount. They told the customer to keep them in the loop on any future experiences. 

The Twitter chat was then escalated to a supervisor, who authorized the coupon and scored the agent’s response a decent 90 points out of 100. The only improvement suggested was the agent not addressing the customer’s Twitter handle in the response. The supervisor then scheduled a re-training of the Twitter Response procedures to be delivered to the agent via the WFO suite's E-learning features within an agent portal.

This is atypical of standard features found in Workforce Optimization Suites, but "social media monitoring" is available in the Virtual Observer suite.

It's a multi-channel world. How many ways can you reach CSI?

There are many different ways to connect with us here at CSI.

Among them:

LINKEDIN:
Our LinkedIn page is a great introduction to CSI and our capabilities. It's a good way to reach call center professionals and telecom industry people as well. We do quite a bit of recruiting with LinkedIn, obviously, and it's also been a great source of brand exposure.We'll be looking to post more updates in particular on LinkedIn relative to career opportunities, strategic alliances and more.
http://www.linkedin.com/company/coordinated-systems-inc.
Who we're connected with: Customers, Partners, Industry Experts

BLOG:
Read by customers, partners, employees & external news outlets. Serves also as an email subscription-based newsletter. Virtual Observations

TWITTER:
Our place in the twitterverse is a growing one! Come follow us:
http://twitter.com/virtualobserver
Who follows us: Customers, Partners, Employees, External News Outlets, Industry Experts

PHONE: We'll always answer your call.

Read the complete list of contact methods on CSI offers a multi-channel means of connecting with us

Customer service in the age of social sharing

There isn't much room for customer service mistakes these days.

After all, every business has a CRM system, a quality monitoring solution, hundreds of years of coaching and training knowledge, speech analytics tools, desktop monitoring and analytic tools, etc., all implemented with the common goal of improving customer service.

With the proliferation of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as smartphones which can transform a quick thought into a viral message before the thought is reconsidered, a lone customer service error can grow into a whole lot more.

Salesforce acquired a company called Radian6 with the purpose of integrating social media monitoring with your CRM dashboards.

If someone's mentioning your brand on Twitter, it's now automatically posted on a dashboard immediately. Forward-thinking companies will have a social response team patrolling these feeds, responding with honesty and integrity. If they don't, it will only make it worse.

Yesterday I had walked into a convenience store and showed them an item I had bought which had an expired date. I simply wanted to return it. They didn't even apologize for selling me the item, never mind offering me a new one.

My first reaction, the emotional outrage, was to break out my Droid Razr, snap a picture of the date on the item and then of the store logo and post it to Twitter. Why would anyone want to do business with this store?

Of course, after a few seconds, I thought about it. Maybe the cashier was having a rough day, and maybe this incident isn't representative of the entire store chain.

The Droid Razr went back into my pocket.

How often does the reconsideration not happen, and the blistering comment get posted?

Does your company have anyone who is actively monitoring social media for brand mentions?

Are they equipped to respond?

We're now enabling multi-channel monitoring in our call recording and quality monitoring suite, Virtual Observer, where you can record web chats, emails, social media response, etc., and bring those interactions into your evaluation and scoring process.

If you're going to be out there responding, optimize the way these situations are handled and include them in the quality initative.

Note: since this incident, a highly reputable, upscale store whom I don't frequent, happened to ship me a pair of totally used (thought we were purchasing new) rain boots for my 3 year old son. Crazy!

I tried to call and give them a chance to put their stellar reputation to work and they proceeded to make me transfer and re-tell my story three times. Frustrating.

I returned the boots to the local store, went home and ordered them on Zappos for the same price. Zappos shipped them to me next day, for free.

I ended up relaying the pleasurable Zappos customer experience to the store I had previously purchased the boots from, and the clerk actually told me "I know. Zappos is great. I can't believe we had actually shipped you the ones you returned to us (they were not only worn but discolored.)."

Related articles

• Connectedness Is Zappos

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• Flag Customer Service Opportunities with Social Media Monitoring

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• SalesForce Makes Listening And Engaging In The Social Web Easy (cloudave.com)
• Facebook and LinkedIn - The Modern Age Lead Generation Tools For Your Business (smedio.com)
• Audio Archive: Is Twitter the New Help Line? (socialmediatoday.com)

An Opinion on Social Media and the Contact Center

An interview with Rich Marcia, marketing director for Coordinated Systems, Inc.

Q. How do you use social networks as part of your corporate communications and customer service initiatives?
A. I’m experimenting in social media where there exists clear purposes: for example, Twitter, to deliver quick updates to our followers; LinkedIn, to extend an open hand to potential business partners and customers who may want to reach us via referral; and our blog, which serves the dual purpose of replacing our online newsletter and managing our readership. More “leaps of faith” for the B2B marketer, such as Facebook, Mobile, etc., are a bit more risky. I’ll be looking more into them in 2010, and it’s possible we may dive deep there, but it’s more likely we’ll just be testing the waters.

Q. How can contact centers utilize social networks to increase sales, productivity and operations?
A. That’s a great question. Many companies now need to hire and train “social ambassadors” who search, read and contact people who may be expressing opinions about their companies or brands in social media. Companies, I believe, will eventually cross-train contact center employees to do this. If a Facebook fan contacts you on your fan page, that’s not much different than a prospective customer reaching out to you on your website. Contact center employees can be trained to handle those types of inquiries. It will, however, require a different skill set to professionally “manage” a public relations “incident” where someone on Twitter complains about your company or brand. The “social ambassador” will have to reach out and address the issue at hand.

Q. What social networks are recommended for business purposes?
A. For business purposes, almost all business people can benefit by being on LinkedIn. Referrals are the best forms of leads, job opportunities, partnerships, etc. Twitter is also useful as a cog in your content machine. Twitter can direct people to your blog, which directs people to your website. Throw your LinkedIn profile in there and you’ve exponentially increased your online visibility and the ways of which people can contact you.

Q. How should businesses manage employee usage of social networks?
A. I believe to some extent employee usage of social media should be encouraged – in that they should be evangelists for their companies. They should care what is being said on the net about their company. They should want to defend certain criticisms and investigate others. They should post news and share excitement about their company. Management can still monitor usage and enforce the same rules as in regards to personal calls or web surfing. In the same regard, managers and business owners can’t simply expect all employees to be organically evangelistic – the employees need to be nurtured and marketed to as well. For a product or company to be mentioned in a truly authentic manner, those doing the chattering have to truly love the product or company.

Q. What are some of the main benefits of using social networks?
A. Personally, I’ve seen cancer survivors discover and connect with other survivors on Facebook. They’ve exchanged tips, shared news and made new friendships. I’ve also seen people “connect” with neighbors from communities they haven’t actually moved into yet. Media such as music, video, websites and such are shared amongst your trusted connections, and thus immediately given some degree of legitimacy. Of course, as with anything, there are a list of “cons” to go along with the “pros”. Overall, I’d say the “pros” are winning out.

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Going the classic trade show route in an era of Twitter

Last week we exhibited at an industry trade show. The face to face meet and greets at a trade show can be like speed dating in that you have about a minute to impress people (kudos to my sales manager for the analogy).

On the opposite end of the marketing spectrum (debatable?), last month we also saw the launch of our Twitter account, which is available at http://twitter.com/virtualobserver.

We're going to use it to deliver brief bursts of CSI and Virtual Observer news, as well as snippets and other noteworthy call center industry links.

The best way to describe Twitter for those who don't really understand what it is yet is that Twitter allows you to post or receive quick status updates on people/companies/brands that you care about. In about three minutes, you can go to your Twitter homepage and review what everyone is doing. That's it, you're caught up, you can get back to your busy day.

Many companies are using Twitter to reach their most loyal customers, updating them with exclusive specials, breaking product news, or insider tidbits that only a true fan would want to know.

Of course, many people bombard Twitter with many trivial and useless tidbits of information. If you don't want to follow those people, you don't have to.

Back to the trade show. The trade show was very fruitful -- very glad we went. Sometimes you can't beat good, old fashioned face-to-face contact.

8 things your call center can implement to help offset the impact of a challenged economy

* Reinvest in current customers. Re-allocate resources to take extra care of those customers who have stuck with you.

* Cross train your people. Cross training your call center reps will improve productivity and add flexibility to your schedules.

* Take new approaches. If your customers aren’t spending time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.com, etc., they will be soon. Make sure your company is visible on these social networks and easy to find. You’ll want to include social network monitoring and response as part of your agent cross-training.

* Consolidate troops. Move all your teams and departments to the same location to save money on technology, energy and training cost. Taking it a bit further, you could combine your purchasing power with other companies to gain greater negotiating leverage and reduce costs. This applies not only to purchase products and supplies but also to services. What contact center does not utilize a cleaning service?

* Reinforce the basics. Simple fine tuning of courtesy skills can have a dramatic impact. Even if you have not implemented an automated quality monitoring system yet, set up some peer evaluation and coaching as part of your new cross-training regimen.

* Reward your people. Innovative rewards and incentive programs can motivate and refocus your team. Make it fun to achieve.

* Personalize your CRM efforts. If you have call handling scripts, think about adding some personalization. Add some fields in your CRM for your customer's birthdays, sports teams, local town, family status, etc. Next time the customer calls in, they will feel special and truly cared about, and most importantly – “they're more than a number” to you.

* Capture the “WOW”. Have your reps add some notes on the "wow" moment - that moment when a customer seems to really show their satisfaction. Save these recorded calls to a "Best Of" media library and share amongst the organization. This will not only beef up morale but can help in training new hires.

6 Pownce invitations to give out

This isn't really call center-related, but I thought it was news worthy enough to post. Pownce is a new turbo-IM/forum tool that alerts you to news from your friends in social networks. For example, if everyone in your LinkedIn contact list used Pownce to make announcements, change status, or to let people know where they were, you would automatically be pinged with the messgae. Like Twitter, the thought is you'll use these tools as kind of a hyper-blog, where you update it with every single activity.

Another example would be if all of your call center agents had Pownce, and they posted every time they finished a call, and they were all in your Pownce network, you could be notified with each change in status.

It's a strecth to see this as a business implementation, but it's still kind of a cool technology. Entirely web-based, you need to be invited to use it. I have six invitations, so comment below and I'll send you one if available.