Businesses are constantly developing more innovative and meaningful ways to connect with their customers. Establishing these lasting connections is now increasingly essential and difficult, as companies work to rebuild intimacy and loyalty in a time where consumers are more digital, more distant and more discerning.
While customers trust brands less, they're trusting their peers more. Forums and message boards have established a public meeting place where customers can expect to find honest and objective information about a company's products and services. With the adoption of social, this expectation made its way out of the forums and onto Twitter.
Making contact more social
Customers found their voice on social, and now that voice is growing louder and more powerful. For major companies, social can make up to 10% of all inbound customer contacts, and is growing faster than any other service channel. Customers are turning away from brands and towards each other, expecting faster and more authentic engagement than ever before.
Based on Conversocial primary research, we see 50% of of customers aged 18-29 are more likely to turn to social media when they have a technical issue rather than a support forum. This leads to challenges with taking advantage of the social trust economy, and delivering large-scale customer service in a channel that's less structured and more emotional. Social media can be a hugely powerful tool for companies to engage and connect with their customers in an authentic way, with all the value of social identity and mobile communication. And it is just as efficient-or even more efficient-than other digital channels, as long as it is integrated properly into the contact center, with enterprise-level workflow and performance management tools.
Extending contact beyond the center
So how can contact centers extend human, authentic service while maintaining operational organization and costs? The answer lies within their brand's crowd.
Businesses can both reduce support costs and build advocacy by tapping into their passionate community to participate in the dialogue, and help resolve a higher volume of customer service issues through the crowdsourcing of knowledge. By democratizing service and empowering customers to serve each other, brands are both stepping back to enable deeper relationships within their communities and stepping forward to positively nurture this phenomenon.
When implemented effectively, peer-to-peer social resolution can be a true extension of the contact center's ability to serve their customers. However, this requires a fully committed, social first approach that can perfectly strike the balance of participation between customer service agents, their crowd experts, and social customers.
Community-powered social customer service allows businesses to turn a formidable challenge into their biggest opportunity, with their most valuable assets.