Budgets for social media are steadily increasing and all the analyst predictions say that 2010 will be the year of social media marketing. It doesn’t take Confucious to know that marketing and social media are a cost effective alternative to traditional marketing. What’s notable is the move to incorporate customer service as part of this plan. Traditionally, marketing and service are very different parts of a company. So different that marketing and communications are primarily inside-out focused (messagin starts inside and gets pushed out) where Service almost always carries an outside-in (customers call in to interact) perspective. You can see some of the consolidation happening on the tools side (recently Exact Target aquired Cotweet) which often leads to consolidation within companies. Beyond the social tools, communications vendors are getting into the action as well with Unified Communications platforms that manage phone, email, video, social, etc.
If social customer service is consolidating with marketing efforts then who owns customer service now and is customer service gaining importance at the executive level? These are important questions especially as Comcast’s CEO, Brian Roberts announces that Twitter is changing the culture there. This statement makes us think about the possibility of customer service with a much different influence within corporations.
Think about the process of setting up social media at any company (listen first, then engage…). Just break down listening into it’s parts like monitoring for prospects, existing customers, brand mentions, competitors and detractors. This includes duties normally performed by marcom, service, sales and public relations, yet one tool can be used. So who takes charge, who’s accountable for “listening” at a company, let alone responding/engaging?
Next, at a time when companies are reducing headcount, can service departments possibly respond to the dozens of new social channels in addition to traditional phone calls, emails and sometimes chat? In order to fully understand the breadth of what affects social might have within an enterprise, we must understand if social actually adds to overall inquiries or if an increase in social inquiries decreases traditional inquiries. As companies discuss scale and social, they need to include people, hardware and software considerations to evaluate the true impact to the business.
Finally, companies have been dipping their toes in the social media waters for the past 2-3 years. When Mr. Roberts talks about how social efforts have a significant impact on a large company’s culture, you have to start thinking about your social efforts with a bit more foresight and structure than short-term, dis-continuous campaigns. To prepare a company for such an initiative, they need to consider long term strategies, systems integrations, employee buy-in….or do you? What are the entry points that a company needs to prepare for to begin to shift to a culturally infused environment?
How can we possibly work through this topic in only one hour you might ask? Luck for us we have “Famous Frank” or Frank Eliason from Comcast this week to moderate this topic.Frank has lead Comcast’s social efforts with a focus on service through Twitter that has made him world famous. Frank brings first hand experiences and answers to all our questions and more. Usually you would have to have a very serious problem with your Comcast service to be able to spend an hour with Frank. Today, we will have the opportunity to learn and share our collective experiences in managing a socially enabled customer service department. The topic this week is as follows:
Topic: Customer Service’s Role in Social Media
Q1: Is Social Media converging the roles of Service, Marketing and PR, if so who owns it?
Q2: How do you scale customer service in social media?
Q3: How do companies prepare for social customer service?
Join us at 12 noon EST on Tuesday March 9, 2010 for one hour. The first question will come out at noon and then at 12:20 and 12:40. To participate or simply follow along, tune into #sm50 on Twitter or just go to our LIVE page for a richer experience.
How do you differentiate your offering while improving service for existing customers and still keep your “cool” factor in your industry? Business is still tough, new competition comes from every corner and buyers are still hesitant. That makes for interesting decisions coming from marketers, product development teams, customer service and other outward facing departments inside of companies.
Listening is the first step in social media (everyone says so). Not onlydo you have to listen, you have to listen for 6 months or more before you are allowed to do anything. Just ask the experts!
As we head into the second decade of the new millennium, it’s amazing to think how much has changed in such a short time
FUD! (
It is not often that a technology comes along and changes the world. That is the case with Twitter. Started in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, 
If you want to purchase an accounting system, customer relationship manager (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for your company, it’s a pretty established process. There are a few meaningful vendors in your space determined by the size of your company, the features are all pretty clear and there are case studies galor for how-to and how-not-to select, implement and run those systems. Now, if you want to source some external help for social media, well that’s a different story.
Everyone’s talking about integrating social media into our everyday business. Whether you have a small local business or are a global enterprise, everyone is interested in the best way to incorporate social media practices in some way to solve their business challenges. As with any disruptive technology there are no shortages of short-sighted integration strategies. Initially we all focus around the new shiny toys/technology then we focus on the people side and the individuals who are using the shiny new toys are how great they are for it. Eventually we need to evolve, to discover the best ways to integrate into our management and business practices.
We hear so much chatter that companies have to be participating in social media. The chatter then leads into who should do it….and Viola! a single person is assigned to it. That person is usually born of the marketing or public relations (PR) team and the goal is rather simple: 1. Listen and 2. chat it up in an effort to create customer relationships. Customer Relationships! are you kidding me?!?! Who in marketing or PR has ever had to directly sell or service a customer (let me help you – not many)? So why don’t we ever hear about social media from the people who are responsible for managing direct customer experiences on a daily basis? That’s right, the customer service teams, talk about resources! Customer support, service, tech support usually have dozens if not thousands of company representatives waiting for you to call. Ahh, therein lies the issue. Customer service is typically reactive and most likely engineered to react via the telephone. 
