May 2010

Robert Trent President Contact Center Transformation Group, Inc.

How to use Social Media in Contact Centers to reach your

business objectives

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How to use Social Media in Contact Centers to reach your business objectives

May 14, 2010; Robert Trent

If you’re a contact center manager or marketing analyst responsible for:

Driving sales revenue,

Acquiring new customers,

Reducing customer attrition,

Building brand recognition,

Increasing customer spending,

Extending customer lifecycles,

Building “Raving Fans” not just satisfied customers,

Increasing market share, and/or

Reduce competitive risks,

…and you’re not sure how Social Media can help, start by reading this article and sign up for our free newsletter “Social Media Tips & Tactics”.

Building customer loyalty for your products and services is the ideal end result of an effective marketing strategy that starts with reaching your target market and making them aware of who you are and how you can satisfy their needs. Using an effective Social Media strategy can move the prospects in your target market through a series of stages that in the end transforms them into loyal customers. Reaching this level builds a customer base that advocates your products and services to others through the Social Networks and drives up your Net Promoter score.

Up until recently, before Social Media hit the stage, companies had large budgets to support their messaging push-through strategies. Consumers were bombarded with literally thousands of “impressions” that were delivered through every conceivable channel available from the minute they woke up in the morning to the moment they went to sleep at night.

Then, as they became aware of internet and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, two things happened. First, they found that this was a much more desirable way to begin their shopping spree. Second, they became increasingly disenchanted with the traditional aggressive pounding they took day-in and day-out from the “push-through” message marketing strategies used by virtually every company out there selling anything.

The shift to using the internet as the starting point for gathering information was a natural human reaction fueled by the constant,

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borderline abusive tactics they were subjected to by large companies.

Then it happened. Web 2.0 emerged seemingly out of nowhere. This was a GAME-CHANGING EVENT marketing. Social Media and the Social Networks now allowed consumers to interact with a limitless number of friends and customers that had already purchased the product or service they were interested in through the Social Networks within the new eco-sphere that was created by the Web 2.0 Social Medial environment.

So how does this play into how contact center managers and marketing analysts have to deal with meeting their business objectives that I mentioned in the first paragraph? It makes it easier, cheaper and faster for you to reach your objectives now than it has ever been before Social Media existed, and consumers are “loving it”. Let me show you why.

First you need to understand what happens within the Social Media environment. First, as reported by Nielsen Online and Internet World Stats (www.internetworldstats.com) reports that there are some 259,561,000 people that access the internet in North America. Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you’ve heard of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and You Tube to name a few out of hundreds that are out there today. These are Social Network platforms used by virtually all the consumer segments across every demographic group in existence. 100% of your target market uses some form of these Social Networks in their decision making process. This includes both business to business (B2B) as well as business to Consumer (B2C) prospects.

Human nature hasn’t changed since the dawn of man. The vast majority of people talk to others before making a purchase decision. Before Social Media, neighbors spoke to neighbors over the back yard fence about which lawn mower to buy; teenagers asked their friends in the school lunch room what kind of sneakers to buy; college students asked where was the best place to hang out on a Friday night to meet new friends.

To make my point, here are some interesting facts about the three social network sites used by businesses as of the date this paper was published:

Facebook:

More than 400 million active users

50 percent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day

Average user has 130 friends

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People spend more than 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Twitter:

Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users

.New users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day

180 million unique visitors come to the site every month

75 percent of Twitter traffic comes from outside Twitter.com (i.e. via third party applications)

Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API

Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day

Twitter's search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day

Of Twitter's active users, 37 percent use their phone to tweet

Over half of all tweets (60 percent) come from third party applications

Twitter itself has grown: in the past year alone, it has grown from 25 to 175 employees

LinkedIn:

It took nearly sixteen months for LinkedIn to reach its first million users. The last million took only 12 days

LinkedIn surpassed 50 million users according to Mashable.com

In just the month of September 2009, they grew an astonishing 5.68 percent according to Mashable.com

In February there were more than 70 million visitors to the site

They are represented by business professionals in over 170 countries world wide

These conversations still occur. But instead of being limited by the physical proximity in the past, Social Networks have allowed these same “conversations” to occur on the platforms that each of the Social Networks provide. A Twitter account with a person that has several hundred “followers” can post a question to every one of them about what type of sneakers they should buy. Within minutes, 30, 40, 50 or more will reply with their opinions and experience with what they purchased. Replies or comments from

Twitter drives sales and improves customer

services at a fast food drive throughA drive through fast food restaurant chain is using Twitter to build a following of individuals who frequent their establishments. In less than 140 characters a “contact center” group puts out a tweet to let their followers know the special of the day. Each can reply back using the hyperlink with what they want and when they will be coming through. The fast food drive through restaurant prepares their order in advance.

RESULTS: Drive through window time cut 50%, drive through business rose 60%.

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their friends weigh heavily on their purchase decision. This goes far beyond the school lunch room conversation with 2 or 3 friends.

Just think how valuable it would be if your company could tap into the conversation, listen to what’s being said, and even join in the dialogue. This power is so assume that it defies the imagination.

Here’s the good news, you can do this now. But first, read the three examples of how Social Media and Social Networks are being used today; yes these are ways that other businesses are using Web 2.0 resources in the real world, and you can too once you understand how to do it.

These are just a few examples of how marketing and contact centers can quickly learn of opportunities and risks to their companies by having a Social Media Strategy and using the most effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) asset they have to do this; the contact center. It is effective and the best part is that is costs less than trying to do this any other way.

This is the first of a series of free articles we will be publishing that will offer more information on How to develop Social Media strategies, how to build a process to capitalize on this new resource, and how to deploy a program in your contact center. Future articles will address these topics:

Case studies in B2B and B2C applications where Social Media is having an impact,

Questions that your Social Media strategy must address,

How to select the right Social Network platforms,

Key elements that your company policy include regarding employees using Social Media Platforms for business,

How to address the data security issues associated with the use of Social Media platforms by employees.

Sign up for our “Social Media Tips & Tactics” newsletter or click on our RSS feed to get them sent automatically. Go to www.cctgrp.com .

Monitoring Blogs turns lemons into lemonade for

Cable service providerA national Cable service provider has a dedicated team of contact center agents monitoring blog posts looking for any “conversations” going on about their company. One agent spots a post on a blog that goes into a vivid description of how horrible the service was that he was getting; service technicians missing appointments, poor reception, and blackout periods. The bloggers followers wasted no time chiming in with their terrible experiences.

Within 15 minutes the Cable provider agent reached out to the disgruntled customer, determined what the issues were and resolved the issue by the end of the day. The next day the post was so complimentary that not only was the Cable customer completely satisfied, he became a convert and was advocating the Cable companies service to everyone that followed his blog.

RESULTS: The Cable provider converted an unhappy customer which

contributed to the customer retention objective and gained new customers which contributed to the acquisition objective.

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About the author:

Robert Trent has had a career spanning 37 years, in business and

education. He was appointed to and served on a Special Task Force for the State of New Jersey held executive positions Fortune 100 companies including Sprint, BellSouth/AT&T, and IBM.

He is an expert author, a Social Media CRM strategy consultant and has built Go-to-Market programs for large corporations. His clients have included, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Genesys Contact Center Software Company, technology product and service providers, Alcatel Lucent, The Home Depot, The Washington Post, Telstra Telecommunications (Melbourne, Australia), and Chungwha Telephone (Taipei, Taiwan, China).

With his expertise in building Go-to-Market strategies for Fortune, he is sought out by businesses and professional associations for his knowledge in using social media to build customer care strategies, outsourcing companies, and contact center software developers.

His thought leadership in contact center strategy building and knowledge of CRM in the health care industry has won the esteemed Aberdeen Award.

Today he is the founder and President of Contact Center Transformation Group, Inc. (www.cctgrp.com), a consulting firm specializing in Social Media Optimization for customer care and contact center operations. He serves as an adviser to Outsourcing Institute and leads the “Call / Contact Center Special Interest Group” as the Chairperson.

About Contact Center Transformation Group, Inc:

Founded in 2006, Contact Center Transformation Group, Inc. is a professional consulting practice specializing in Go-To-Market strategies using Social Media platforms and Social Networks to support and expand the scope of contact center operations in Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies, outsourcers, contact center software vendors, and Value Added Re-sellers that service the contact center industry.

They provide contact center assessment services including Social Media Optimization strategies that impact contact centers. They specialize in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) matters related to contact center operations and technology challenges for public, private and government organizations.

Their team of Social Media and contact center professionals has extensive experience and a deep understanding working with operations and IT groups to improve processes, optimize existing technology assets, and guide future technology decisions based on sound strategies. Our list of clients includes “Fortune 500” companies and small regional companies.

They have established strategic alliances with leading vendors, service providers, and other consulting firms in the contact center industry that, together, allow them to bring the right expert resources together to address their clients specific needs. (www.cctgrp.com)