Where's the beef?

We do not have a single customer interested in Fuze integrating Twitter or Facebook as an extension of their support channel. I personally also have a hard time believing that consumers are turning to these sites for support. There are just too many alternatives that are far superior to getting a consumer to a resolution.

Do any of your non-vendor readers see twitter or facebook as a place that consumers turn to for getting support? Are you aware of any statistics that break down the frequency that these social sites are successfully used to get support on a product or service not related to the site?

Primarily because of all the free Twitter add-on software products to centrally manage all incoming SMS messaging, I do see Twitter as an effective place to send various notifications from eService offerings. However, until I see a material consumer usage rather than financially motivated vendors trying to hype and ride the wave, I will have to conclude that all of this is pure hype to sell product and consulting services. It's always easier for product managers to ride what's hot rather than come up with true innovation and I see this as no exception.

Regarding monitoring social sites for consumer sentiment, I see value, but I am not sure how it scales. In a recent twitter conversation with Graham Hill, I posed the question: “@grahamhill Seems to me like twitter will quickly become a symphony of squeaky wheels expecting VIP treatment. Let's see that scale” and Graham responsed “How right you could be if Corps don't see that different customers need to be treated differently. Can't oil all the wheels.” I am still waiting for a response to my follow-up question: “@gramhill any thoughts on a strategy for what wheels need to be oiled?” I am not quite sure how companies are expected to differentiate who get’s the oil in a way that is manageable and still considered equitable by the community of consumers.

Bob, I look forward to reading articles on your site that separate the hype from real consumer value on how these social sites truly need to become part of the eService ecosystem.

Chuck Van Court
President and Founder
Fuze Digital Solutions

www.fuze.com
Enterprise-grade customer care and knowledge sharing without the enterprise price.

Not just hype

Chuck, you ask a great question. We're currently running a survey which includes a question about usage of Twitter and other social media sites. Results will be available later this month.

I've personally talked to JetBlue which uses Twitter to help customers on service issues, and plans to analyze Twitter content with a text mining solution in the future. See JetBlue uses Twitter – Listens to Customers, Grabs New Business.

Comcast has also made news by using Twitter to proactively connect with consumers. http://twitter.com/Comcastcares

Yes, there's plenty of hype in social media, but my take is that large consumer-oriented companies, and the vendors that support them, are a good fit to leverage social media in customer service and other areas. Perhaps your customer base doesn't fit that profile.

Or, they could be out of touch with their consumers. Do your own research and see if you can find your customers' consumers posting about their experiences on Twitter, Facebook, etc. If they are, then it may be worth exploring.

Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.
Blog: Unconventional Wisdom

Hi Bob, As mentioned, I

Hi Bob,

As mentioned, I definitely see value in monitoring consumers comments in social media sites. However, there are plenty of other vendors out there that are making social site monitoring their core competency and I believe they will ultimately do a better job than any eService vendor in that role. As such, we plan to partner with someone once things settle out some.

Any thoughts on how a company can best deal with the potential landslide of squeaky wheels, per my interaction with Graham?

However, as recently demoed at your webinar by the other vendor, I do not see people looking to get customer care for unrelated products on these sites. Monitoring and managing consumer perceptions, certainly. Creating KB content and as a source for escalation into the eService channel, I have a hard time seeing it.

Chuck

www.fuze.com
Enterprise-grade customer care and knowledge sharing without the enterprise price.

Engage where consumers hang out

Chuck, time will tell whether social media becomes a bona fide customer service channel. I think it will.

I don't mean that consumers will use it as the "official" channel to report a problem. Rather, I think a more likely scenario is that a consumer has a problem, doesn't want to take the time to use the official channels, but nevertheless has time to post a comment on Twitter or Facebook. So, they're not "asking for help" but just sharing an experience. Nevertheless, this is an opportunity for companies to proactively contact that consumer and offer to help. That's customer service in my book.

Today companies like Comcast, JetBlue and Zappos are monitoring social media and engaging with customers in that media. It's something like the early days of email response and web chat -- a disconnected channel that didn't work with the rest of a CSS solution.

Just as email and chat are now integral channels in most e-service suites, I believe the same will happen with social media. Of course, that doesn't mean that every channel is right for every company.

Regarding "squeaky wheels" and how to scale... the risk with social media is that vocal complainers go viral. Even if they are "wrong" -- the best strategy is to find and deal with them early, before a "Dell hell" situation emerges. Text mining technology can help find and prioritize social media posts from angry consumers and put them in the queue for agents to resolve the situation. That's how to solve the scaling problem.

Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.
Blog: Unconventional Wisdom

Hi Bob, As mentioned, I

Hi Bob,

As mentioned, I definitely see value in monitoring consumers comments in social media sites. However, there are plenty of other vendors out there that are making social site monitoring their core competency and I believe they will ultimately do a better job than any eService vendor in that role. As such, we plan to partner with someone once things settle out some.

Any thoughts on how a company can best deal with the potential landslide of squeaky wheels, per my interaction with Graham?

However, as recently demoed at your webinar by the other vendor, I do not see people looking to get customer care for unrelated products on these sites. Monitoring and managing consumer perceptions, certainly. Creating KB content and as a source for escalation into the eService channel, I have a hard time seeing it.

Chuck

www.fuze.com
Enterprise-grade customer care and knowledge sharing without the enterprise price.

Bob: Sorry about the

Bob:

Sorry about the unintentional, duplicate post.

When consumers turn to social media sites for airing their dissatisfaction, I believe it is a clear indication that something is not working with the company's customer care channels. Of course, that conclusion is not true for the folks that just are trying to game the system and get their way.

For those trying to game the system, I think they will also be able to easily game the text mining analytics tools you speak of.

Chuck

www.fuze.com
Enterprise-grade customer care and knowledge sharing without the enterprise price.