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Presentation done by John Ragsdale at the meetup for Bay Area Executives:http://www.meetup.com/BayAreaExecutives/Social media are fast-tracking to becoming important channels for customer support. In fact, our data shows that 57% of technology companies have a customer discussion forum, and 36% already embrace Twitter as a method for starting conversations with customers. Join us for an interactive lunch presentation to hear John Ragsdale, VP of technology research at Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), share the advantages and risks of embracing social media for support, as well as data from TSIA’s social media survey.
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Effectively Leveraging Social Media
as a Support Channel
John Ragsdale
Vice President of Technology Research
22
Since 1989Since 1975 Since 2005
TSIA Member Profiles
10%
20%
7%
30%
6%
13%
15%
Company Revenue
<$25M $25-$100M
$100-$500M $500M-$1B
$1-5B $5-10B
>$10B
52%
30%
10%
8%
Geography
Global (NA, EMEA, APAC)
NA Only
EMEA Only
APAC Only
320+ Corporate members across all areas of enterprise and consumer technology
Social Support Defined
Service and support offerings in which voluntary customer actions meaningfully change the customer experience, for those and other customers–either in support, or indirectly in the rest of the whole product.
The range of applications for social support includes: Peer support (forums, third-party blogs)
Customer-generated content (visible feedback, customer edited docs / KB)
Ratings and reputation (for people and content)
Social networks as a channel (e.g., updates via Twitter, company blogs)
Voice of the Customer (ideation, product ratings, “CGM” analysis)
Proposed Definition from David Kay, DB Kay & Associates
Social Network Adoption Precedes
Best Practices
57%
49%
36%
0% 20% 40% 60%
2009
2008
2007
Do you offer a discussion forum for customers?
• Everyone asks:
– How do you attract
customers?
– How do you encourage peer-
to-peer support?
– What moderation resources
are required?
– How can we search forum and
KB content?
– What emerging channels
should be leveraged?
– How do you calculate ROI?
– What vendors are most
commonly used?
Source: TSIA Member Technology Survey
Social Media for Support: Blessing or
a Curse?
• Positive
– Great opportunity to
dazzle customers
– High visibility can lead
to positive media
attention
– Embracing customer
channels of choice
– Boosts company’s
“cool” factor
• Negative
– Trendy channels come
and go
– High visibility can lead
to embarrassment
– Emerging channels do
not always lend
themselves to tech
support
– Most volatile
customers
How long has your company been
using social media?
21%
29%
22%
26%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
Don't use
< 1 year
1-2 years
2-3 years+
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Top Installed Customer Community
Platforms
1%
1%
1%
1%
1%
2%
2%
2%
3%
4%
6%
17%
20%
37%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
RightNow
InQuira
phpBB
Joomla
Telligent
Parature
Drupal
Leverage Software
Small World Labs
Consona CRM
Jive
Other
Lithium
Home Grown
Source: TSIA Member Technology Survey
TSIA Member “Pacesetter” Examples
• Cisco Consumer
Community
– Over 200k registered users,
significant increases month
over month
– 10-15M page views monthly
– 1M+ user sessions covering
all Cisco Consumer products
– Currently serving 500,000+
“Accepted Solutions” and
climbing
– Global communities
supporting 6 international
languages
• HP Consumer Forums
– Over 2 million customers
visit each month
– 140,000+ registered
members
– 20 million page views per
month
– 33 Super Users worldwide,
so far contributing 24,000+
posts, averaging 25 hours
a week in the Forum
What Department Is Primarily
Responsible for Social Media?
44%
14%9% 8% 8% 8%
5% 4%
0%5%
10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Staffing for Social Media
• Challenges for social
media staffing:
– What is the role of forum
moderator and how many
do I need?
– Should we use customer or
employee moderators?
– Should employee
moderators pretend to be
customers?
– What skills or profiles are
required for successful
moderators?
19%
45%
21%
7%2%6%
FTEs dedicated to social service
As needed 0
1-3 4-6
7-9 10+
11Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Online Tools Used to Provide
Service Or Support to Customers
25%
35%
36%
44%
46%
49%
54%
72%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Social networks (Facebook)
Wiki (Wikipedia)
Microblog (Twitter)
Video (YouTube)
RSS feeds
Listservs
Blogs
Forums
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Supporting Social Media Channels:
Go Where Your Customers Are
1% 3%
27%38%
31%
0%
20%
40%
0-12 13-17 18-34 35-49 50+
13%
41%
27%
17%
2%
30%
21%
102%
276%
194%
0% 100% 200% 300%
Under 17
18-24
25-34
35-54
55+
Facebook 2009 Member Distribution by Age
Growth Rate % of Users
4%13%
45%
24%14%
0%
20%
40%
60%
0-12 13-17 18-34 35-49 50+
Collaborative Content Development
• Content creation has
become more transparent
• New challenges for KM
processes
– Customers as authors
– Customers as editors
– Audit trails and security
concerns
• 27% of members
reported plans to invest in
wikis in 2010-11
25%
32%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
2008 2009
SSPA Members Offering Customer Wiki
The ROI Challenge
4%13%
12%
3%
23%
45%
Are you receiving ROI for your social service
investments?
Full ROI received
Some ROI received
No measurable ROI
Don't expect ROI
Unable to measure ROI
Don't know
• Barriers to accurate ROI
tracking:
– Few companies have
enough cross-channel data
to identify traffic
fluctuations
– 35% of members using
home-grown forum solution
with limited reporting
capabilities
– How to measure number of
resolutions
– Soft metrics critical, but
hard to quantify
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Most Likely Barriers for Broad
Adoption of Social Media
3%
4%
5%
7%
7%
8%
10%
11%
12%
13%
16%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20%
Negative impact on productivity
Brand risk/reputation
No exec sponsorship
No customer demand
No perceived benefits
Internal resistance to change
Insufficient internal resources
More 'personal' than 'business'
Security/legal concerns
Low priority project
Unable to measure ROI
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Social Media Efforts Lacking
Discipline, Process
• Only 17% of members have
integrated social media
channels into the corporate
website
• Only 8% of members have
integrated the new channels into
their CRM/incident management
system
• Only 8% of members include
social media channels in
performance dashboards
• Only 3% of members address
social media channels in SLAs
How important is it to combine social and enterprise
content together in a centralized repository?
Extremely Important
31%
Important31%
Neutral24%
Not Important10%
Not At All Important
4%
Source: TSIA 2009 Social Media Survey
Typical Knowledge Ecosystem
Product Information
Product Manuals
Installation Guides
Release Notes
Upgrade Procedures
Diagnostic Information
Knowledge-base
Bug Database
Product Diagnostics
Customer Log Files
Customer Information
Account Information
(CRM)
Incident History
Warranties/ SLAs
Multi-channel history
Training Information
Product Training Modules
Integration /SDKs
Video Tutorials
Administrator Guides
Community Information
Peer to Peer Support
Forum Questions/Answers
Expert Blog Posts
Developer Access
Web Information
Third Party KBs
External Forums
Industry Blogs
Tech Sites, Online
Research
Three Search Markets Converge to
Create Intelligent Search
KB-Centric Search
Concept based, finds one right answer
Enterprise Search
Search data in any format, structured
or unstructured
Social Search
Factors in user ratings, links and
page views
Intelligent
Search
From Popular to Effective: Mining
Forum Content
• Emerging “social search”
platforms enable:
– Dynamic, personalized
FAQ lists
– Dynamic recommended
links on content
– Pre-filtered search results
based on social elements
– Customer “folksonomies”
eliminate manual tagging
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Social Media
Community
Self-Service
Web Chat
Phone
Percent of Customer Issues by Channel
Source: TSIA Benchmark and TSIA Social Media Survey data
Merging of Social Service and Self-
Service
• Intelligent search is bridging
the gap between
knowledgebase and
community content
• Social search is leveraging
“voice of the customer” across
communities, social media
channels and self-service
• Call deflection is key metric,
all unassisted channels
counted
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Self and Social Service
Social Media
Community
Self-Service
Web Chat
Phone
Percent of Customer Issues by Channel
Source: TSIA Benchmark and TSIA Social Media Survey data
Merging
TSIA Recommends: Start With Basic
Support Processes
• Monitor
– Create notification rules for
conversations about your
company and products
• Engage
– Encourage customers to move
conversation to an auditable
channel
• Record
– Capture interaction so it
remains part of customer history
• Share
– Close out the loop in the social
media channel with results
Looking Ahead….
Social media will continue to add channels and content
Be cautious of over investing in trendy channels
Increased mobility in both B2B and B2C drives expectations and lowers patience
