The Rise of Social CRM and Next-Generation Customer Service

– Submitted by: Michael Wooden, SVP Market Development, ACS, A Xerox Company

In my almost seven years at ACS, a  Xerox Company, I’ve witnessed the advent of Web 2.0 and the explosion of social media applications, leading the way to a fundamental shift in power between companies and customers.  With wikis, blogs, online communities, and social media sites like Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, consumers are finding their voice and sharing their opinions any way they can—rating and reviewing products, services, and companies;  talking about brands and companies in communities of interest; and more.ACS Social CRM

There is a real threat that exists for companies dismissive of social media’s impact on brands. We’ve all heard horror stories about businesses either taking too long to respond to customer complaints, or simply ignoring them all together within social media.    Several years ago, a name brand computer maker was not as responsive to a customer’s complaints as the consumer would have liked. The customer, who just so happened to be a prominent blogger, started blogging about his experiences.    Many customers shared his frustrations and flocked to his blog, which created a community of angry customers whose voices grew so loud it was impossible to ignore.

This story illustrates the need for businesses to get in front of a customer service issue before it erupts and spirals out of control.  With almost 74 percent of consumers choosing brands based on the customer experiences their peers share online, there are huge benefits gained  from using social media to enhance customer experience and extend brand reach and value.

It’s not enough for businesses to just eavesdrop on or participate in the conversations taking place within social media sites.  Organizations must capture and distill those ‘conversations’ into knowledge that can be used to improve customer service.  Of course, doing so involves considerable challenges.

ACS can help.

We recently introduced our Community as a Strategy offering, which combines social media marketing, consulting, agent-assisted and automated social media monitoring, CRM reporting and data integration technology.  This helps companies connect with customers before the customer reaches out to the company.  Read more about it on CMS Wire here.ACS CaaS

We’ll continue to talk about our Community as a Strategy offering over the next couple of months. In meantime, please tune-in to the latest edition of Xerox Real Business Radio (#xeroxradio) for a more in-depth discussion on this topic.

—  Michael Wooden, SVP Market Development, ACS, A Xerox Company

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5 Comments

  1. Antoine Dubuc April 30, 2010 -

    This is great news. I come from a programming background and simply loves all the forums, email lists, blogs, webTV channels Microsoft offers its customers.

    I sincerely hope Xerox can lead there as well. Already Freeflow Process Manager has an internal blog done by its product manager.

    I sure hope this pioneer endeavor is the first of many similar things to comes for xerox.

    Faster response time and better social integration with our customers is the key to better support and better ties with them.

    The fires usually starts with the operators, and they have less and less time to spend waiting on the phone. Instant communication through online technologies, logmein sessions, is what my customers (I do tech support) all rave about.

    great news! 🙂

  2. Brian C. May 3, 2010 -

    Any possibility the jpg images/infographics within the post could link to a viewable format?

    • Karen Arena May 5, 2010 -

      Brian:
      If you double-click on the image, it should be working now. Please let us know if you can’t see a larger version of the image. Thanks for your patience and calling out the problem.

  3. bpo July 21, 2010 -

    BPO Systems was founded in 2000 to bring best value solutions to Fortune 1000 organizations.

  4. Nick R July 13, 2011 -

    CRM works best when all stakeholders are involved. That means sharing information with customer and partners so everyone is one the same page. With CRM, companies gain unrivaled flexibility to design the processes and expose the right information that makes for more successful partners and happier customers.

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