Product Details
Introduction
Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher use social networking services, making headlines across the globe and raising consumer awareness of these emerging communications channels. But some leading edge companies have started to offer customer service and support through social media.
Scope
*Primary research consisting of interviews with providers of social networks, social media monitoring tools and contact center infrastructure suites.
*Direct interviews with providers of telecommunications services, CRM suites, knowledge management applications and systems integration services.
*Extensive secondary research drawing from the mainstream press, technology trade journals and academic journal articles.
Highlights
This report examines the potential market for customer service provided through online social networking and how that customer service might be expanded to formal contact centers. It looks at the trends driving customer service on social networking sites and provides case studies of current use cases.
Additionally, it examines the technological and cultural barriers to having formal contact centers handling social media-driven customer service interactions, as well as the benefits of doing so. It also presents a potential competitive landscape, breaking down vendors that might have a role in this future market.
Reasons to Purchase
*Understand the current use of social media for providing customer service.
*Learn how companies can benefit from bringing social media into their contact centers.
*Learn which companies will help facilitate contact center's adoption of social media.
Table of Contents
Overview 1
Catalyst 1
Summary 1
Key Messages 2
Social networking usage is exploding 2
Companies are capitalizing on online social networking as a tool for marketing 2
Companies have started to use social networking for customer service 2
Customer interaction technology vendors have an opportunity to help provide scalability 2
Social media interactions in the contact center would provide visibility and accountability 2
Contact center-provided customer service through social networking is the Wild West 3
Table of Contents 4
Table of figures 5
Table of tables 5
Market opportunity 6
Barriers to adoption of social media in contact centers 7
Technological issues create barriers 8
Treating social media like just another channel 8
Problems with scaling up enough to meet growing demand 9
Difficulty in understanding the intent of social media messages 9
Figuring out which networks to target 10
Process and cultural issues must be addressed 11
Giving up a sense of control 11
Specialist pools vs. contact center 11
Enterprises need to develop a personality 12
Training social skills to anonymous agents 12
Inability to outsource social media operations 13
Cooperation between marketing and contact center 13
Large set of potential benefits of social media-based customer service 13
Deepening customer intimacy 14
Customers get instant gratification 14
Customers helping each other 14
Higher self-service rates 15
Different demographics 15
Powering inexpensive outbound alerts 15
Customer Impact: four emerging channels explored 17
Twitter-140 characters, but a big voice 17
@Comcastcares 20
@WholeFoods 20
@VirginAmerica 20
@MountainViewPD 21
@magiccurrykart 21
Facebook-vampires, food fights and customer self-service 22
Dented Reality 22
Glocalnet 23
Coca-Cola 23
Google-general search as a tool for service 23
Second Life-support and commerce go virtual 24
Competitive Landscape 27
CRM and knowledge management vendors 27
Salesforce.com 27
Parature 28
Knowledge management vendors 29
Social media monitoring vendors 30
Radian6 30
Contact center infrastructure vendors 30
Aspect Software 31
Avaya 31
Online social networks 31
Twitter 32
Facebook 32
Google 32
Get Satisfaction 33
Co-opetition will be the norm for now 33
Go to Market 34
Integration between different parts of the social media puzzle 34
Acquisition as an entr?e into social media 35
Small to medium enterprises: underserved again? 36
Recommendations 36
Don't get hung up on the network 36
Recruit experts in change management 36
Don't be afraid of personality 37
Treat social media as cross-channel, not multi-channel 37
Use social networks 37
APPENDIX 39
Definitions 39
Methodology 39
Further reading 39
Ask the analyst 40
Datamonitor consulting 40
Disclaimer 40
List of Tables
Table 1: Facebook's popularity around the world 22
List of Figures
Figure 1: Twitter's ranking among most popular sites on the internet, February-April 2009 7
Figure 2: The online social media universe 10
Figure 3: Countries of origin of Twitter's users 18
Figure 4: The Twitter fail whale 19
Figure 5: Commerce in Second Life 25
Figure 6: The social media conversation cycle 34
