Social Networking - Hamburger Helper for Customer Service

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, co-founder of FACE IT Corp. ("Putting a Pretty Face on Customer Service"). Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation.

A Brave, New Customer Service Model

The Social Networking phenomenon has signaled a sea change in consumer behavior and provided lessons for enterprise purveyors of customer service. And the self-publishing models touted by Twitter, FaceBook and even LinkedIn act as a present-day wake-up call for SaaS and CaaS-based business users who care to learn from the consumer. Here's how it all comes together.

Consumer Zeitgeist and the Power of One

Arguably, the social ramifications of self service automation were manifest in Don Wetzel's first American-born ATM, which appeared in 1968. This was a year after the first one showed up at Barclays Bank in London. But it took until the mid-eighties for the American consumer to validate the technology that would eventually pervade our banking system. Likewise, e-commerce solutions were available on Compuserve even before open internet-savvy solutions appeared a decade later. What took so long?

Social mores and fear had a lot to do with the long tail of these technologies, which set the stage for the wide-open world of Web 2.0 and Social Networking. In the beginning, ATMs and e-commerce were curiosities. And two things stood in the way: 1) The "personal touch" of walking up to a teller and; and 2) the fear of something going wrong. Slowly, the public in general realized that you could still chat it up with bank employees if you had the time and inclination. Slowly, the public realized, even in the face of fraud and security issues, that the chances of your money being siphoned away into the ether were rare.

Today, the casual discourse and social connection to others is augmented by social networking - filling a void once left by ATMs and e-commerce. And new self-service software is imbuing a sense of power to the individual. Twitter lets you tell the world about your experiences, foibles, and run-ins with bad service instantly. Blog sites allow you to singularly expand on your experiences. And photo and video sites such as Flickr and YouTube add a dimension of rich media to your personal observations.

Enterprise Blockers: Childish Fear of Disintermediation

You might wonder, what with the uptake of social networking in the consumer world, what is taking business enterprises so long to embrace the model. With an ear to the ground of Social Networking sites, enterprises can tune-in to the sentiment of its constituencies pretty easily. There are even stand-alone tools to do that in the form of advanced filtering software such as Buzzmetrics (now part of Nielsen Online) and Fizzback. But their use is little more than commercial voyeurism without a proper feedback loop. No, enterprises are still practicing the equivalent of walking up to the teller, and they are just plain afraid to embrace the Social Networking model fully.

Why are they afraid? To put it plainly, they are afraid because of institutional arrogance and the notion that if anyone or anything gets in the middle of their connection with customers - they lose. This head-in-the-sand attitude will doom some of these business if they don't wake up and smell the coffee.

The institutional arrogance we are witnessing will be slowly chipped away as the strategists who work for business realize that disintermediation can be good if there is an instance of value-added. The presumption that Social Networking is just "noise" is in fact a very dangerous. One only has to look at the aftermath of the infamous "A Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch" YouTube video to understand the utter power of a single person's "voice." Admittedly, Comcast spinmeisters used the incident as a means to (at least temporarily) establish a more open dialog with consumers.

The instance of value-added in the posting of a single-voice, sarcastic video rant is of course limited. But it speaks to the issue of disintermediation. Here, YouTube acted as a publishing outlet for a consumer who otherwise may have simply been lost in a maze of IVR choices and long hold times in the carriers' contact center.

Value-Added and Aggregated Content

There is in fact a thick vein of value added content that can be mined from the enterprise if they finally learn how to leverage communally shared information. Take, for example, the efforts of GetSatisfaction.com. Here, thousands of consumers can share their own self-generated knowledge base of experiences. They can learn from one another. They can post questions that wend their way into the enterprise in a civilized, formatted way.

Tools are even available to link "Satisfaction Widgets" between the enterprise and its consumers - all with a third party in the mix. So is this third party "in the way" or are they adding value? Clearly, they are adding value by providing disambiguation, communal content, and a means to funnel critical communications that otherwise may have never occurred.

Customer Service Mediation manifests in other content-rich sources as well. For example, consider how open source communities augment the knowledge bases of companies like RedHat. Take, for example how Hackitn0sh.org has garnered over 100,000 participants in its forum. Sure a lot of what these consumers do is swap unsupported "jailbreak" tips for iPhones, but many offer one another support tips not as easily forthcoming from Apple itself.

In publishing, the rallying cry has been "Content is King." Now if the enterprise will finally realize the emperor has no clothes in that regard, they will really get somewhere.

Custer's Last Stand: Traditional Contact Centers

Admittedly, and even though I embraced Social Networking tools personally over five years ago (I use LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and MySpace religiously), it took me a while to "connect the dots" between Business and Social Networking. Sadly, I believe my traditionalist roots in contact centers kept the blinders on for a while.

My initial approach to contact center managers, architects and strategists on the subject of social networking has conjured some of the most protectionist, and unfortunately ignorant retorts. To sum it up: "The last thing I want is for my contact center agents to be hacking around on social networking sites when they are supposed to be concentrating on First Call Resolution."

This protectionist mindset presumes, of course, the default fear of not only disintermediation, but also the prevailing notion that all knowledge, all help, and all resolution springs from the all-seeing font of the enterprise itself.

That's not to say that the contact center industry is lacking the gumption or the creativity to try out new technologies. Some companies have in fact embraced the idea of on-line user forums and a more open-door policy when it comes to problem resolution. But they're missing the point. The point is Social Networking in its more pure, non-corporate-sponsored state is a bastion of consumer empowerment and dignity.

Can Contact Centers Leverage the Cry for Dignity?

Let's face it. Social Networking has helped to set a much higher "expectation bar" in the area of immediacy and dignity. It is just plain undignified to be asked to converse with a robot instead of a human being. It is just plain undignified to be told you must wait in line to talk to someone if you have a problem. Do Social Networking models force a robot dialog? No. Are Social Networking models based on a many-to-few ACD queue and thus force a long wait time? No. Social Networking models leverage a yearning for immediacy and collective communications that are much more dignified. There's a lesson to be learned here.

Communications as a Service to the Rescue

Although hosted models are no salve for everything, enterprises would do well to embrace the customer service mediators who provide Communications as a Service capabilities for customer contact and problem resolution. Hosted models are not capital equipment intensive and are relatively painless from a buy-before-you-buy standpoint. Outsourcers and BPOs in the contact center field can and will be a great seed bed for this new "Web 2.0 Customer Service" landscape.

But it all starts when the strategists and business leaders of today's enterprise make a fundamental decision: To be inclusive instead of exclusive in their approach to customer service. Just plopping your logo on the face of a stand-alone iPhone application - fighting for mindshare amongst all the other iPhone applications - isn't going to transform your company into a true Web 2.0 Customer Service company. That's just another disintermediation play. Instead, think consumer dignity. Think immediacy. Think consumer-driven content.