LiveOps Blog
Some Thought-Starters on Social Customer Service
Eric Salas, Director, Product Marketing
Just last Thursday, we were at the Cloudforce event in San Francisco listening to Marc Benioff ask an audience of 17,000 people, “how does your enterprise bridge the social divide?” Well, the week has definitely flown by very quickly, but here at LiveOps we continue to have conversations around this topic. We are passionate about learning more and sharing ideas to help companies become social enterprises. More specifically, how can we help guide companies as they look for ways to bridge their contact center to their customers via social and mobile channels?
Below are some recent articles and blog posts I came across this past week that you might find useful on the topic of social customer service. I’ll be back soon to share some more!
Eric Salas
Director, Product Marketing
10 reasons why customer service has failed to wake up to social …
econsultancy.com3/14/12
Stop Making Mistakes with “Social Media Mistakes” by Brian Cantor
www.customermanagementiq.com3/12/12
The State of Social Customer Service [Infographic] | Our Social Times
oursocialtimes.com3/16/12
It’s a Brave, New, Social World
blogs.gartner.com3/8/12
Cloudforce 2012: Bridging the Social Gap Between Companies and Customers
Marty Beard, President and CEO
“Welcome to the Social Enterprise” was the main theme of yesterday’s Cloudforce 2012 conference. Marc Benioff covered a variety of categories under this theme during the keynote. One of the categories was customer social network, which revealed a gap in social media communications between companies and their customers. LiveOps is helping to bridge this communication gap by transforming customer interactions in the cloud.
In the past decade, there’s been a major shift in communications. Social Customer Service is now a “must have” and not just a “nice to have.” This was demonstrated by leading-edge company case studies showcased in Marc’s keynote yesterday. Salesforce.com is enabling SMBs to service social customers today. To service social customers on an enterprise scale, however, companies need even more powerful cloud solutions, such as LiveOps Platform and LiveOps Applications, with the following attributes in order to ensure both quantity and quality of service:
- Agent Productivity – Giving enterprises the tools to serve customers right, regardless of how the communication comes in – Email, Chat, Voice, SMS, or Twitter
- Management Oversight / SLA – When managing your workforce, analytics and metrics such as Abandonment Rate, Time to Resolution, and Conversion Rate are key
- Intelligent Routing – Customers can interact in the channels they choose and these interactions are routed to the right agent in the right channel at the right time
- Voice – Regardless of social media channels, people will continue to use the phone as the most personal and immediate way to communicate
When done incorrectly, this has a serious impact on the bottom line as measured by:
- Brand equity
- Customer satisfaction
- Share of wallet
- Loyalty for repeat purchase
- Customer Lifetime Value
I’ll close with this final thought. I believe that the 17,000+ people who attended this conference can’t be wrong: the social enterprise is here. The wait is over. This is true for the customer service contact center. LiveOps’ vision of managing customer interactions in the cloud, no matter what channel the customer chooses, is real. Isn’t it time you bridge the gap with your customers and become a social enterprise, too?
- Marty Beard, President and CEO
Cloudforce Presentation: Building a Social-Enabled Cloud Contact Center
Sanjay Mathur, VP of Product Management
Yesterday, I had the opportunity not only to attend salesforce.com’s Cloudforce 2012, but also give a presentation on building a social-enabled cloud contact center, which I have talked about a number of times. This particular presentation, though, focused on our partnership with salesforce.com and how, together, we are enabling companies to become “social enterprises” and interact more intelligently with their customers across multiple channels to deliver a better customer experience and increase customer lifetime value.
Sanjay Mathur Presenting at Cloudforce 2012
I shared a few success stories involving LiveOps customers, but perhaps the strongest endorsement of how we enhance Service Cloud is actually salesforce.com itself. As the platform that powers salesforce’s own cloud contact centers globally, we know what it takes to ensure that customer interactions are handled quickly, easily, and efficiently in the cloud. Through a unique DataExchange and CTI integration with Service Cloud, LiveOps Platform is able to synchronize customer data seamlessly with salesforce.com to ensure companies are servicing their most valuable customers effectively in whatever channel they prefer. For instance, if you’re using our platform and would like to know more about a customer in order to route their inquiry to the correct agent, you can pull data from salesforce.com and make an intelligent decision on where to direct the customer. We are proud to call this intelligent routing, which is one of our core features.
salesforce.com aptly gave Cloudforce the theme “Welcome to the Social Enterprise.” It wasn’t hard for me to recognize and demonstrate LiveOps as an enabler of the social enterprise revolution, and with the help of salesforce.com, we are further taking customer service to a whole new level.
Visit our blog later today for a full recap on Cloudforce from our CEO Marty Beard!
- Sanjay Mathur, VP of Product Management
Cloudforce Keynote Asks: How Are Enterprise Organizations Bridging the Social Divide?
Ann Sung Ruckstuhl, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Earlier this morning, I had the great pleasure of sitting in on the Cloudforce keynote from salesforce.com visionary and CEO Marc Benioff. I’ve attended a number of conferences, large and small, and have to admit this was one of the more well-thought-out and put-together keynotes I’ve seen, with inspiring messages, demos, and customer stories. Most interesting of all, it followed the theme of the conference “Welcome to the Social Enterprise” – by enabling the social enterprise firsthand and setting attendees up for a truly interactive event. From connecting the audience to an Activision customer through FaceTime and assisting him on the spot, to printing one attendee’s Twitter image through an HP printer on stage, we were shown the value of the Social Enterprise.
While each keynote speaker covered a number of topics on the evolution of the social enterprise, two thoughts in particular really stood out to me – bridging the social divide and transforming the way we handle customer service. Your customers are already active on social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Is your company? With your customers and employees on one side of the social divide and your company on the other, Benioff asked “How does your enterprise bridge the social divide?”
This was of interest to me because here at LiveOps we’re answering that question every day through the LiveOps Platform and LiveOps Applications, more specifically, LiveOps Social. We’re helping enterprise organizations bridge the social divide and take customer service to the next level through our social-enabled cloud contact center. We want to make every organization a responsive social enterprise and arm them with the tools they need to communicate directly with their customers via the social media channels they love. The results of taking the extra step to go where your customers are? Increased brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and customer lifetime revenue. That sounds like a good trade-off to us!
Check back on our blog later today for more on Cloudforce and our presentation on “Building a Social-Enabled Cloud Contact Center with LiveOps and salesforce.com.” We’re also live tweeting from the event and encourage you to follow along with us here: LiveOps on Twitter!
- Ann Ruckstuhl, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer
LiveOps – Live at Cloudforce
Sanjay Mathur, VP of Product Management
Our team from LiveOps is headed to the Moscone Center West in San Francisco tomorrow for Cloudforce, a one-day free event on all things “Social Enterprise!” I’m looking forward to mingling with an expected 17,000+ attendees for a day of specialized break-out sessions and breakthrough social ideas.
Please stop by to meet our Product Managers at LiveOps’ booth (30A) where we will be demonstrating the enterprise-grade LiveOps Platform and LiveOps Applications, including LiveOps Social. Our team will show you how the LiveOps Platform can enhance the salesforce.com Service Cloud to smartly manage multichannel customer interactions across social media, voice, email, chat, and SMS.
I will be presenting in the Partner Theatre at 5:30 pm on “Building a Social-Enabled Cloud Contact Center with LiveOps and salesforce.com.” Feel free to drop in and ask questions.
For more information and to register for Cloudforce, please visit: http://www.salesforce.com/events/details/cf12-sf/registration.jsp. Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates during the event!
- Sanjay Mathur, VP of Product Management