Social customer service, which uses social media to serve customers, is rapidly becoming the new, critical channel to drive satisfaction and loyalty. Organizations are at different stages of maturity in their social care programs: some are only listening to customers to improve marketing, products and support, while others regularly engage with customers to reduce contact in other support channels.
While two years ago only five percent of companies used social customer service, Gartner predicts that by 2015 peer-to-peer support projects will supplement or replace tier-one contact center support in more than 40 percent of the top 1,000 companies with a contact center.