Envision | Embrace Social Media

Just when call centers were starting to get their arms around the multichannel mix of phone, IVR, email and chat, somebody goes and piles another package on top. Social media. ICMI takes a look at social media in the call center and the best practices surrounding it in a recent article.

We’re looking at much more than a passing fad, folks. A survey by Nielsen Online showed that social networks and blogs are now the fourth most popular online activity, even more popular than personal email. And users are not just “tweeting” and blogging about their everyday lives; they are sharing their customer experiences - often not very favorable ones - with the Web 2.0 world. In a recent study conducted by the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR), 59 percent of respondents said they regularly use social media to "vent" about their own customer care frustrations - a pretty frightening finding (to corporations) when you consider that 72 percent of respondents said they used social media to research a company's reputation for customer care before making a purchase, and 74 percent choose to do business with companies based on the customer care experiences shared by others online.

Don't forget to sign up for our upcoming webinar where we discuss social media best practices in the contact center. You can sign up here.  And, read the rest of ICMI's article here.