Donna Fluss

There are so many misconceptions in the market about using social media for customer service, many of which are due to the newness and immaturity of the solutions. We all have seen and read vendor claims that make their solutions sound too good to be true, and more often than not, the promises don't match up with the actual performance. These solutions may one day help organizations efficiently deliver customer service using social media, but today, most are too immature and, as importantly, the best practices that are essential to facilitate the process do not yet exist.

In order to separate fact from fiction, DMG Consulting LLC conducted a worldwide benchmark study on using social networking for customer service. Among the findings, we discovered that 67.4% of enterprises are already using social media for a variety of activities that often include some form of customer service. The study found that despite the widely recognized potential power of social media, few...

"What is the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) in charge of?" If your CCO can answer this question, he/she may have a fighting chance of surviving and possibly succeeding in this position. If your CCO can't answer that question, I suggest that it's time to update his/her resume, as it's very difficult to succeed when the job is not well defined.

The concept of a Chief Customer Officer is a great one. The challenge is that most companies already have many organizations and managers who are charged with ensuring that customers are satisfied. The relevant parties include, but are not limited to:

1. Marketing – responsible for understanding and meeting customer needs and wants
2. Sales – responsible for selling customers what they are willing to buy
3. Customer Service/Technical Support – responsible for addressing customer inquiries and problems
4. Product Development – responsible for developing the products that customers want
5. Market Research –...

Proactive customer care (PCC) is an exciting concept that, when done properly, delivers benefits to both enterprises and their customers. Customers want to hear from preferred retailers, healthcare providers, airlines, delivery companies, etc., as long as they consider the communicated information beneficial. The challenge for businesses and other organizations is to create useful communications that their customers welcome, and to deliver these messages in each customer’s channel of choice – phone, email, SMS, fax and, in the future, video.

Dialing is Not Dead

The speech analytics technology sector continues to grow rapidly. Despite the recession, the number of seats grew by 48% between 2008 and 2009, and the momentum in 2010 has been very strong. Many companies that started with small pilots in 2007 and 2008 have added additional seats during the last 12 months. Senior executives are starting to “get it,” and appreciate that speech analytics solutions can provide valuable insights into the reasons why customers and prospects call their organization.

There are many other uses of speech analytics, including: increasing first contact resolution, reducing average handle time, script adherence, identifying competitive situations, reducing customer attrition, identifying “at-risk” customers, improving the customer experience, identifying new revenue opportunities and new product ideas, and fraud prevention. While these are currently the most common uses of speech analytics, new ones are emerging on a daily basis.

The Current...