My recommendation is to assess the use of social media channels for specific business processes – such as sales, marketing, supply-chain, etc..  on per-business-process basis.  The functional business unit will need to own those “social” extensions to their core business processes anyway. There might be limited subset of functions that will make sense to deploy as shared services, however most of the functions should be owned by BUs.

Let’s walk through this example:

Customer Service/Support Business Processes.

You were asked to come up with Social Media strategy for Customer Service/Support functions. Where to start???

Here is a quick step-by-step methodology that can help you to get started!

Phase 1.

Analysis

–        You need to decide which social media channels to pick for the initial phase of deployment : blogs, forums, social networks, etc;

o   First create a list of all social media channels to review [long list];

o   Then decide on how you are going to evaluate these channels – in some cases the channel that is not a highest in use by your customers might have a very high weighting factor in terms of influence on readers, etc..

o   Decide on how you can collect data needed for this evaluation;

o   Evaluate;

o   Pick 1-2 channels to start social support on.

–        Suggest people/roles to manage these new channels, assess the impact on their current activities;

–        Gather requirements on integration, reports and analytics, workflows, document them;

–        Change Management team has to be informed about this initiative and get involved;

–        Other departments, such as Training, Product Management, IT, etc.. have to be notified and included in discussions.

Phase 2.

Design .

In this phase you need to decide:

-          What tools to use to monitor selected channels on on-going basis;

-           How often to monitor/report;

-           Who is responsible;

-          Design of Workflows (who, when, does what, triggers, processes);

-          Design of Integrations into back-end systems;

-          Design of analytics and reports;

-          Training materials/plans have to be designed;

-          Development and implementation plan [time/resources] have to be completed.

-          Cross-functional processes are designed.

Phase 3.

Implementation:

-          Selected tools are deployed;

-          Assigned employees are trained;

-          Integration is done;

-          Reports/workflows are developed.

-          New processes/Tools have been tested.

-          System goes live.

I am intentionally over simplifying phases/steps in this sample Social Support Deployment Methodology as I am looking for your input here: what worked, did not work for you?

Looking forward to reading your comments!

1.       I call customer service and get to talk to an agent right away?

2.       I get a correct resolution to my problem fast?

3.       I can find a colleague in Europe who works on the same problem?

4.       Post a question on discussion board and get solution within 5 min?

5.       When my call gets transferred from one department to another I do not have to repeat who I am and why I am calling?

6.       Agent at the podium actually likes me asking him/her questions and trying to be truly helpful?

7.       I purchase products and services that are reliable enough that I do not need to deal with points 1-6?

8.       ..  you can add your Ifs here!

What is the formula of success in keeping your customers happy in most “unhappy” moments – when they contact you [in person, via social media channels, phone, etc..] with issues [or questions] about your products and/or services??

Here is my recipe:

70% – culture: customer focused company – not a person, not a channel – the whole company is customer focused!

20% – analytics and analysis – 100 degrees: why so many issues? Do we need to fix a product? Do we need to update Knowledge Base? Add agents? Increase support hours? Focus more on social media channels? Etc..

10% – software tools/solutions – the right mix of enabling technologies to support required business processes.

Is your company a GOOD COOK? What is your recipe?

John Ragsdale is the vice president of technology research for the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA). Previously he served as the vice president of technology research for AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA. Ragsdale’s area of expertise is in creating strategies for improving the overall customer experience and services operation through technology. Ragsdale drives TSIA’s highly regarded technology research agenda, delivering insightful, thought-leadership research and analysis on the most pressing business issues facing services leaders to enable them to better plan and execute their service strategies.

Prior to joining SSPA, Ragsdale spent over five years at Forrester Research as vice president and research director. During his career, Ragsdale has held product management and marketing positions at various service and support technology vendors, including Clarify, AnswerSystems, Platinum Technologies and Nortel Networks. He has been involved in customer service throughout his career, including over ten years managing both the internal and external customer support organizations at J.C. Penney, before moving to the Silicon Valley in the mid-90s.

With his in-depth industry analysis experiences, Ragsdale brings an extensive understanding of the technology and vendor landscape for services. He leverages those insights to help guide Association members in making informed technology, business and investment decisions.

I am posting his presentation and video recording of his talk.

Video recordings from our previous meetups are posted on our iTV channel.

Social Business [Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0] news, discussions and jobs are posted on our LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

All Social Business resources are listed at Social CRM World web site.

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” Einstein

Not too long time ago I had a question related to the use of some type of online service. The first thing I did – went to their online help. It took me a while to play with my search terms to finally get to an article that was somewhat related to what I was looking for. But… it did not contain clear instructions on how to solve my problem.

I immediately decided to use their real-time online chat. Well, the person who was on another side apparently was using the same knowledge base that I was searching in my step 1 of solution finding journey.

And then I had to move to step 3 – writing an email to that company’s support department describing the issue yet again. I did get a response back, but it was the same one that I already heard 2 times before. I responded. My response contained less than admirable words towards the support services of the company which product I was trying to use. Magic! My request got finally escalated! And I did hear back from THE expert. The one who understood my issue and helped me with the solution.

Just for the fun of it, I went back not too long time ago and checked the online knowledge base of that company to see if they have updated the solution I was trying to use with the data that helped me with resolving my issue. No, the content was still old, no updates.

Why I am telling you this story? You probably have dozens of the similar stories you can share with me. My main reason is … Social Media and all the hype around how great social media is for customer service support.

Your company’s social media service support will be as great as that knowledge base article that has not been updated for a long time.

Before you through more money and people on these new service/support social media channels make sure you have your back end systems and processes under control.

Here are some of the questions you need to address:

-         Do you have a process in place to analyze social media generated service/support requests:

• What was the root cause of the issue?
• Is there a solution in place in online Knowledge Base?
• Can that solution be easily located?
• Do you need to make changes to your product [UI, layout, flows, etc..] to avoid service/support questions in a first place?

-         People

• Do you train your service/support people to listen to incoming requests, or they are trained to follow their scripts?
• Do you train them to comment on why they think service/support request has been generated in a first place and suggest methods/solutions that could prevent similar type of problems to appear in a first place?

Instead of me re-writing everything that relates to Knowledge Management, I suggest you hire top notch Knowledge Management consultant who can look at your back end systems, processes and can advise you on how to set things up so 80% of most commonly asked questions can be solved online using online help. And you can focus on those remaining 20% unique “hard” requests that most likely relate to unknown bugs and product functions that need to be developed…

Going back to where I started – with that problem that took over a week to solve and all the time and people that were involved in solving it… Nothing has changed. There is someone else who is going through the same process I went through not too long time ago now… Oh, I forgot to mention that I did check their online user forum – had the same issues – could not find the right discussion and when I did, there were no solution in place either.

So please, when you finally update Knowledge Base, go and find that discussion on user forum and post that solution as well! Thank You!

And I thought – would it be nice to have a single place where I can go and enter my question, and tell where do I want to look for solutions and… get consolidated representation of possible solutions?

What do you think? Will this be helpful? Let’s discuss!

[This is a first post in series "How can I help you? - The next generation"].

In my previous blog post I said that companies have to find ways to locate those amazing people who spend hours every day helping others in solving problems. In their spare time. And without pay! Yes companies, find those people, make them feel very special – they are saving you money, ok?

So who are they – these highly valuable, hard to find “answer” people?

Why do we need to worry about characteristics of these “answer” people? Because if we know what we are looking for we might be able to find them. And we know by now that we need to find them. We need to help them if needed, support them, reward them, and make sure people know about them.

Here is my sample list of “answer” people attributes:

-         on Twitter – lots of replies; less posts and RT;

-         consistent presence – few hours a day;

-         consistent level of responses;

-         typically associated with very few areas – on Twitter – limited number of hashtags, everywhere else – tags, key words, etc…

Source: Marc Smith

Source: Marc Smith

You can see now “answer” people specific patterns you need to watch for doing your social networks analysis.

Your community will never be successful without these absolutely amazing dedicated “answer people”! Be nice to them!

What has changed in a community management space?

Before: companies were creating and managing communities:

Now: users are initiating service/support requests everywhere: on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. , forming their own service/support communities on multiple social networks:

Many companies are struggling with their social media service/support channels strategies.

Here are some lessons learned from Intuit and my thoughts:

-         Based on your products and services pick and prioritize service/support goals per social media channel. In Intuit case, #1 priority is still the internally created communities with millions of users and hundreds of thousands of service requests. The service response goal for Intuit for this channel is 75%. The second most important service/support channel for Intuit is Amazon with target response rate of 100%, etc..

-         Users do want to get support on the same channel they initiated their request at – attempts by Intuit to channel these requests to a special community place have failed;

-         Users trust more their peers for service/support questions;

-         There are many people [experts in your product] out there who will be more than happy to assist others – in Intuit case, they rely almost 100% on their super users to provide Twitter-based technical support;

-         Use community management methodology for social media initiated support communities. Recognize and award most useful users. Kira from Intuit has mentioned about the special Twitter list Intuit has created with the names of the most helpful Twitter-based Intuit users.

Questions to consider:

-         Do you know whether the same gurus who are providing the most helpful support on your internally managed communities are also providing support across social networking channels?

-         Who are the most helpful service/support gurus for your products/services per social networking channel?

-         How can you connect all the dots? How can you make sure people who can provide online support via social networking channels can connect to the ones who need help?

Few weeks ago I did a post on Social Networks Analysis. It was pretty clear from the mentioned diagram that this specific brand did not create twitter-based communities – too many disconnected dots. “Answer” people could not be found anywhere on this graph… Now I think there is a need to create integrated cross-channel communities graph in addition to per-channel social networking diagram to get a better understanding of all the dynamics of all service/support channels. Companies need to come up with integrated service/support communities’ management framework. This will enable them to provide better customer service/support everywhere where the customers are at a lower cost.

Please share with your experiences running service/support operations on social networking channels. Also, make sure you follow our meetup – we have another great panel on The Future of Customer Service coming up on 1/12.

I posted videos from our previous meetups over here.

OK – let’s look at a “back end” of almost any customer interaction center.

Behind this huge cloud of customer interaction center reside few levels of support. Your initial call [or interaction of any nature] goes to well known Level 1 [L1] support desk. Based on the results of your conversation with L1 agent your call will be marked either as complete or will be escalated to Level 2 [L2] agent. You follow me here.

For the purpose of our discussions, let’s focus on level 1 desk. In most of the cases Level 1 support agents are trained well to walk you through a pre-defined script so they can route your call in a right direction. They can also help some folks to resolve very basic problems, like  – is the power on, etc…

We just mentioned one of the key terms that you as a customer need to understand well – script. What is the script? It’s a decision tree with questions, answers and branches of those. Why service/support people need it? Because they are NOT experts – not level 1 folks. The experts are the ones who documented their know-how in some type of back-end knowledge base, developed those scripts that were handed out to L1 people to follow.

That’s why many of you get frustrated talking to L1 agents – “Why are you asking me for a color of my eyes? I’m telling you what my problem is – just fix it! “ Well – they have to go through the whole script. That’s how they have been trained. And they really want to solve your problem fast, or let me correct myself – they want to finish up a call with you fast! Why? Because one of the metrics [that doesn’t make much sense] but is still used to evaluate L1 agents performance is the duration of the call. That’s why today during my on-going discussions with AT&T regarding the quality of internet service, the agent I was talking to was quick enough to tell me  – ok maaam, transferring your call to our wireless support team. “PLEASE WAIT” – I screamed, “I just told you the problem is with wired computers as well. Could you please test all the lines” I pleaded .. please… – yes, that’s what you need to do sometimes to wake those people up, help them to switch from a “script” mode to a “thinking” one and hopefully help you.

What automation/self-service does that is different from what L1 “live” agent does? HUGE difference [smile]! Instead of live person reading you questions from a script, those questions pop-up on your screen or those answers come to you via email.. Really?? The quality of our initial support depends on a quality of the design of those back-end knowledge management systems and the quality of information contained in them! The quality of customer support depends on quality of those scripts support agents use – make them more intelligent, instead of static decision-based trees, build those scripts using advanced AI tools and technologies… WOW! But it is cheaper and faster for the companies just to add one more cheap agent somewhere is a middle of no-where to their outsourced Level 1 contact center instead of investing $$$ in upgrading the whole system.

At this point many of you will demand – get experts, the real ones to talk to me at my very first interaction point. Will be nice, right? Not doable though… Average salaries for those real experts are in mid-100s USD. And many of those initial calls do not require those high skilled professionals anyway…

I hope we are slowly getting on the same page of understanding now where the major difference between L1 “live” and automated support is. It is NOT that HUGE ! Instead of asking for more of those in most of the cases useless L1 agents that tend to frustrate us more than help, I would ask companies to spend more time and money on their back end systems. Make sure that they have up to date knowledge that covers most of the common issues. Make sure that that knowledge is accessible. So we can find relevant solutions fast. Make sure that all the service/support processes are designed with the customer in mind.

What matters to me the most – getting the right answer fast. The only measure I use to rate my experience as a customer.

In order to sort out the pros and cons of each group, let’s go back in time and look at the history of self-service.

In 2007 Times Magazine has published the following a story: “10 Ideas That Are Changing the World” with one piece dedicated to customer service. The self-service concept as you can learn from this article was coined back in 1916 by Clarence Saunders. To increase the profits from his grocery store he opened his new revolutionary at that time chain of self-service grocery stores: Piggly-Wiggly. Now we are using self-service options when we do our banking, checking in at the airports, purchasing online – the self-service life becomes a reality. We are moving more and more into becoming almost 100% automated self-service society.

Customer Service went through the chain of different communication channels: from letters, e-mails, phone calls to social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, communities..

Interestingly enough with the introduction of new channels the old ones did not go away. And the challenges stayed the same: how companies can provide CONSISTENT, GREAT customer experiences across all the channels in a COST EFFECTIVE manner.

From a customer point of view the one and only thing that matters to them – how fast their problem gets solved. And to get support they will use all or any of the channels available. Do I care as a customer if I will get automated response to my tweet with the right answer? – NO! As long as it is fast and accurate. Or maybe not – maybe I do want to see a real human interaction, conversation, friendly personalized support. If I do, am I willing to pay extra?

Do you think that there will be an introduction of new paid service-level based customer service options for social media channels? You want one-on-one personalized conversation? – pay for it? In any case, even if companies will opt-in to provide you with “free” human-based personal interactions, the cost of this support will be embedded in the cost of their goods and services. You will end up paying anyway.

What are your thoughts, expectations and views on a future of customer service in a socially-networked world? Will you as a customer accept self-service based support in social space?

People

Out: hiring “Social Media Experts” for Social CRM, Social Media/Networking projects.

In: hiring people with deep functional/business processes expertise AND deep practical understanding of Social CRM, Social Media/Networking and demonstrated practical expertise of their use.

Why? As market matures, companies will realize that in any type of business social media is not a stand alone application. Social Media has to be integrated with back end processes. Hiring in this space will move to the next level of maturity. Big 4 will lack expertise in anything social, will be too slow to capture this space: too much bureaucracy and misunderstanding will not allow them to lead Social CRM, social media/networking initiatives. Smaller boutique consulting companies with top level expertise in both: enterprise business processes and social media/networking will thrive in 2010.

Methodology:

Out: How to use tools, which tools to use, etc…as a start of any type of Social CRM, Social Media projects.

In: In depth, structured business processes analysis. Integrated methodology. ROI- based identification and deployment of social media tools/applications – very specific per business process.

Why? Again, market matures. Businesses who jumped in social media space in 2008, 2009 will realize that some [most] of their social media tools and methods of engaging those did not deliver the results they were expecting. Re-evaluation, measurements, and application of structured deployment methodologies will help them to re-engineer and re-deploy the ones that did not work and deploy the ones that will help their businesses grow.

Tools.

Major trend: Consolidation.

Out: Niche stand-alone tools will be slowly disappearing or consumed by the bigger players.

In: Introduction of more of social media integrated functions within the core type of business applications suites traditionally used by enterprises.

Why? Social Media/Networking will be more integrated into specific business processes. As usual the integration of stand-alone tools into back-end business applications will prove to be complex and expensive. Main players in ERP, CRM space will be introducing more social media integrated functions within their core applications either by developing on their own or by acquiring companies with products in complimentary space.

I like discussions, respectful exchange of notes, comments. I am positive:  you may not agree with some of my predictions or even [hopefully NOT ] all of them. That’s OK! The main point of this blog was to generate conversations. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts!