Word of mouth has more outlets than ever before. People communicate with each other using tools like blogs, microblogs, social networking sites, text messaging and others. All this on top of traditional medium for communications such as telephone calls, letters and good ol' fashion talking face-to-face. That's a whole lot of words going from one mouth to many, many ears (or eyes).
So the stakes have gone up for each impression your business makes on its customers. Management ought to have a strategy in place for monitoring how its employees engage the community through these new forms of communications. It's not that businesses should restrict communications but that it should be aware of what is said and how its customer base responds. No one person or small executive committee can conceive all of the right and useful ways to engage in this fashion. Allowing customers to experiment with their best intentions will develop innovative, successful programs. But it won't be known, nor can a mistake be corrected when one occurs, without some attention being paid by those paid to supervise.
What may go overlooked is that monitoring new methods of communications is not a replacement for monitoring traditional communications. It is ever more important to monitor face-to-face impressions, telephone conversations and emails. A customer who becomes disgruntled during a telephone conversation has just as much reach with immediate tools for emotional communications as the one who is upset over a blog post. Contact center monitoring and recording is more vital today than it was a decade ago.
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