Everywhere you turn, companies are talking about the importance and renewed focus on customer loyalty, customer experience and really managing and cultivating those relationships. While social media has made it considerably easier for companies to communicate with customers, it has also made it even more important that it becomes a two-way dialogue (if you are a company not engaging in the same space as your customers, you'll be viewed as out of touch). It's about more than engagement, though; it's actually helping those that require service.
John Hernandez heads up the Customer Collaboration business unit at Cisco, where he serves as Vice President and General Manager. Just last November, realizing the importance of social media interaction to their business, Cisco announced SocialMiner, a unique listening tool that enables companies to find and proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through public social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, or other public forums or blogging sites. They demonstrated the product in partnership with Spanlink at last week's #C32011 conference to rather strong reviews. I recently had the chance to catch up with Hernandez to discuss the state of social customer service, what brands will be required to do in keeping up and how the space will continue to evolve.
1. What surprised you most about customer service and social CRM in 2010?
The thing that really surprised me was how quickly the combination of customer service and social media gained steam in 2010-from both companies and consumers. In 2010, we saw so many mainstream companies begin to embrace social media as an outlet for customer care. This means that we now have good use cases and case studies. More importantly, we saw consumers begin to have real expectations that they would be listened to in social media.
2. What will be the biggest change in social customer service in 2011?
I believe that 2011 will be the year for social customer service to become formalized and organized. Companies will move quickly into and beyond pilots for different technical solutions. But just as critical as the technology companies choose will be the people and process changes that organizations will make to address social customer service in 2011. We will see companies begin to organize social contacts into queues or other formal workflows. We will see service organizations begin training "social responders" the way that contact centers train telephone or email representatives.
3. As customers evolve and become even more social, what will brands/companies need to do to keep up?
The most important thing for brands/companies is to break down as many internal silos as possible. We believe that social media shines a very bright spotlight on silos, and those silos will end up embarrassing brands/companies if they are not addressed. A good example is the silos that typically exist in marketing and customer service or the contact center. These two organizations must get in sync with each other in order to get the most benefit from social marketing efforts and in order to serve the social customer effectively. Beyond breaking down silos, companies will need to consider what technology, people, and process changes they will need to implement in order to keep up with the still growing desire that customers have to be served in a social channel.
4. What excites you most about social CRM and customer service channels moving forward?
What we are seeing in terms of customer empowerment is something that we have not seen before. Today, the customer holds so much power to make and break brands. Despite the fear that this might engender among companies, this is actually a good thing. It compels everybody to do better. It raises the bar on customer service across the board. Nobody wants to be the next brand embarrassed at the hands of an empowered consumer making good use of social media. The good news for brands is that there are now a number of examples that they can follow in order to better serve the social customer. The first templates for social customer engagement have been written, and companies that were not in the first wave of adopters can learn from early successes of other companies as they begin to incorporate social media into their customer service efforts.
5. If you could give two pieces of advice to brands about customer service, what would they be?
First, marketing and customer service must talk to each other. These are the two organizations that are on the front lines with customers. They need to be on the same page with it comes to social engagement. This is tricky because marketing and customer service have different objectives when it comes to the social customer. But for an organization to successful execute a social strategy, these two organizations both need to be involved and to have an equal seat at the table. Second, don't be afraid to make a mistake when it comes to social engagement. The confluence of social media and customer service is still very new and very few organizations have "figured it out" at this point. The worst that brands can do at this point is to do nothing because they are afraid of getting things wrong. Consumers will tolerate small miscues in social engagement, as long as organizations are actually making an honest attempt to engage.
Considerable thanks go out to John for his time and thoughts here, and consider this his official welcome to The Social Customer's Advisory Board. What do you think? How will customer service evolve in the social arena in 2011? Leave your comments below or let us know on Twitter @YourCustomers.