May 10-11, Hollywood FL
Want to know what leading edge enterprises are doing for Social Media? A good way to start that search is to ask, listen and learn! The Customer Response Summit [ #crsummit ] is a wonderful event put together by the folks at In the know and it is meant to be a place for leading edge companies to share ideas, best practices and success stories with each other. Avaya had the privilege to sponsor the event and was a key contributor to a superb display of thought leadership in one of the hottest topics around... Social Media in the enterprise.
I walked away with a firm pulse on the market, being a vendor providing solutions to customers is simply not possible without understanding the challenges and opportunities that our customers face. Hence, this kind of opportunity is paramount for Avaya to continue our direction of creating solutions for our customers. So, without further delay, here are the key take-aways:
Incubate and Conquer was a theme of this event. Leading edge corporations have all taken the approach to test this space in a very similar way. By establishing a separate team dedicated to handling this Social Media phenomenon. Is this ground-breaking? Not really... we have seen this time and time again with the introduction of new technology or ways of communicating. It is a cautious, methodical, logical approach to "testing the waters" and it is proving to be very effective so far.
10 seems to be the Magic Number when it comes to defining how many resources you will need to get started. It was quite interesting to learn the fact that out of a dozen or so enterprises who presented, there was a strong similarity in the size of the groups that are being leveraged to handle Social Media. On Average, teams of 7 to 10 are currently in place for each enterprise even though the industries, customer size and Social Media relevance was very different between them.
Experience reigns over Cool! One might have imagined that in order to address users that come in from Social Media, you might need someone "who could speak that language" (i.e. a young person who lives Social) but this was not entirely the case... Companies realize the importance of a Social interaction. It is not a one to one conversation, it is one to the world! Experienced staff is being handpicked that possess a deep understanding of company products and services while at the same time, are well connected within the enterprise. These are folks that are able to promptly get to the right source of information and get the answer to the customer fast and effectively.
Social Media Evolution is leading us straight into the Contact Center. Virtually all companies represented at this event are handling Social interactions in a siloed fashion from the rest of the customer service organizations. This is in fact being done by design and is a clear sign of the social media maturity that companies are going through. But there is also a recognition that this will change over time. There are 3 aspects that are steering the near future outlook straight at the contact centers. (1) Scale: not many consumers are aware yet that companies are ready to service them via Social means, as soon as the word gets out... Look Out! Concerns over scale and efficient handling of these interactions make the role of the contact center very clear. (2) End to End Experience Management: the ability to add the Social inputs into the existing database of customer interactions is the only way to put the entire picture together for each contact and provide an end to end experience. Moreover, The Contact Center operation possesses all the know-how and reporting capabilities to ensure the customer experience satisfaction that is currently lacking. (3) Context: bringing power to the agents is synonymous to bringing context to the dialog; whether it be a Facebook post, a phone call or a web chat... Bringing the Social conversation to the Contact Center will allow for the pre-existing integrated systems to add context to the conversation.
In Closing, the most compelling message I got from this event was a recognition of 2 facts. The first one is filled with excitement as we all realize that Social Media and the Enterprise are simply meant to live together and the other fact is recognition that we are merely scratching the surface on the true value that Social Media can bring to the Enterprise. At Avaya, we are happy to be at the forefront of this evolution and look forward to what's ahead.
