Let’s try to analyze the impact of social media/networking channels on your Level 1 customer support operations.

Before.

Your Level 1 support people were getting customers request via phone, web, email. All these could be classified as customer-to-service desk direct customer-initiated contacts.

Now.

Not all customer’s requests come to you! You need to go and listen and monitor and find those mentions. And build special processes on how to handle/respond to these non-direct-to-you comments/requests/questions/complains.

Reality.

Your current level 1 support organization is not equipped with tools/processes to handle these new customer communication channels. In many cases your service/support functions are outsourced.

Your thoughts?

Would you hire new dedicated resources to manage social media channels? Will you split them by channel? Or you will train your existing Level 1 reps to monitor social media channels and train them on how to respond/route those requests? What tools will you use to integrate social media-initiated requests with your back-end CRM systems? How you will measure customer satisfaction of your support provided via social media channels? How you will modify your existing processes to process new media channels in outsourced environment? How will you address One Face To a Customer issue?

All these and many other questions have to be addressed during social media assessment for customer service/support projects. Please contact us for further information.