Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

As I set out to answer the question, "Is there any merit to social media in customer service?" I started interviewing companies and vendors that had some experience with this. None of the companies had built a Return on Investment (ROI) model. Some had a little bit of a business case, but most had a gut feel. What they did end up with were results. Lower call volumes. Increased first-call resolution. Increase in agent productivity. The list goes on. As I spoke to each company, I noted what they found. But what was astounding wasn't the improvement in traditional customer service metrics; it was the transformation that the business went through as a result of deploying social media. And that's when it hit me. What the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto wrote about more than 10 years ago had come true. Not only was the power in the hands of the people (and no longer with the monolithic companies), but those companies that had taken the plunge got something more. They got a new start for their company -- and giant advantage over their competitors. They "got" transformed.

And not the regular kind of top down type of transformation. I've done a lot of those as a former system's integrator. This is more about an organic transformation, driven truly by accepting the voice of the customer (VOC) and responding to it authentically, genuinely, and honestly. (Those are not adjectives that describe a lot of companies.) When a company decides to deploy social media, the result is that they have made the decision to have a dialogue with their customers. The truth is that some of the dialogue -- and in some cases, much of the dialogue -- will be negative. Part of that is the customers just like to gripe in general. And part of it is that companies haven't really listened to their customers. MostVOC programs get stalled because of lack of executive sponsorship, lack of budget, lack of interdepartmental collaboration, and lack of process to incorporate the feedback they do have into the company in a meaningful and lasting way.

Enter social media and what happens - without meaning to -- is all the things that disappoint, bug, frustrate customers, all the "what would be better if...", "I'd buy a product if it did..." all the marketing, sales, product development. and engineering information flows from communities, from Twitter, from e-review sites, and from the cloud. The question for most companies is, "Once we go down the social media road, what do we do with all that information?" What I witnessed from interviewing dozens of companies is that when a company embraces the VOC data a funny thing happens. Executives, curious about what's "happening" in the social media initiative, decide when they hear the VOC data that something must be done and done now.

My colleague, Jim Kobielus, and I will be discussing this topic in more depth at Forrester's Business Technology Forum, Oct. 8-9 in Chicago. We'll tell some stories about companies who have taken the road less traveled, their results, and how you must make the decision to engage in social media. If not, you may not be in business to worry about it.

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Natalie Petouhoff is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research where she serves Business Process & Applications professionals and contributes to the Forrester blog for that role. Syndicated from Forrester Research. Reprinted with permission.