If these polls are any sort of window into the minds of our readers, then here is what we know about you:

1. You were torn on making a choice, but ultimately you think that social media is a viable, long-term option for service.
2. Indeed, you are tech-savvy…and would love to see QR codes become a new channel for service.
3. Forget the major IVR investments though!  You’re keeping it simple with low-cost fixes.
4. Everything to everyone—generalists are your employee of choice.
5. Keep it simple with those folks though…only 1-2 web chats at a time, please!
6. Your adherence policies do not give much leeway when it comes to reps taking a short “time out” after a difficult call.
7. Given a choice, you would like to see your staff receive many (yet brief) breaks during their shifts.
8. Breakfast is not a routine for you.
9. While you may need a cup of coffee or two—you do not rely on caffeine to get through the day.
10. You like voting…more than 600 of you participating in our polls in 2011, and we hope that you’ll continue to read and provide your opinion in 2012!

Here is the breakdown of results:

Just for Fun Questions
From “Staff Performance Data Series: Breakfast of Champions”
Do you eat a full breakfast?

• No (52%, 61 Votes)
• Yes (48%, 57 Votes)

Total Voters: 118

Do you rely on caffeine to get through the day?

• No (59%, 70 Votes)
• Yes (42%, 50 Votes)

Total Voters: 119

Talent Management Questions
From “Do Your Reps Need a Time Out?”
Does your company have a formal “time out” policy for reps?

• No (90%, 52 Votes)
• Yes (10%, 6 Votes)

Total Voters: 58

Which type of break schedule do you think would be most effective for reducing rep stress?

• More frequent, but shorter, breaks (95%, 54 Votes)
• Fewer, but longer, breaks (5%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 57

From “The Great Debate: Generalists vs Specialists”
Which staffing model do you find to be more effective?

• Generalists (78%, 50 Votes)
• Specialists (22%, 14 Votes)

Total Voters: 64

Technology and Multichannel Questions
From “Social Media: Bright, Shiny Object? You Decide”
Which choice below best describes Social Media for customer service?

• A viable, long-term option (55%, 72 Votes)
• A bright, shiny object (45%, 58 Votes)

Total Voters: 130

From “QR Codes: Next Gen Service or Much Ado About Nothing?”
What do you think? Is there a future in service for QR codes?

• I love it! It’s another service channel for our customers & we’re all for it! (45%, 15 Votes)
• The jury is still out … but I’m anxiously awaiting a verdict. (33%, 11 Votes)
• It’s just another fad and, like acid-washed jeans, it will go away, too. (22%, 7 Votes)

Total Voters: 33

From “How Many Web Chats are Too Many?”
What number of chats do you allow or think is permissible for agents to handle concurrently?

• 1-2 (60%, 29 Votes)
• 3-4 (38%, 18 Votes)
• 5 or more (2%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 48

From “Is the IVR Worth New Investment?”
Companies should approach future IVR investments with the mindset of:

• Keep it simple with low-cost fixes (64%, 16 Votes)
• Bring on the bells and whistles! (36%, 9 Votes)

Total Voters: 25

Related CCC Resources:

• IVR Topic Center
• Social Media Topic Center
• Workforce Management Topic Center

“What is the future of the customer experience?”

Seems like the $64,000 question, right?

Well, I had the pleasure of attending a summit on this topic a couple of weeks ago.  Sitting in with customer service executives from around the globe and across many industries – like financial services, retail, and telecommunications – it was a great couple of days away from the office to give me time to think about the answer to that question.

We talked about everything from big data to integrating service into the customer’s more mobile lifestyle to expanding into new channels to using VOC to, of course, social media.  We discussed customer expectations today, and how to drive change throughout the organization.

And at the end of the day, after having a chance to reflect on all the rich conversations – I had a few takeaway thoughts I wanted to share with you:

Customer Expectations, Today

Seems like the relationship between customers and companies has changed in recent years.  Previously, customers were kept at arm’s length– and while we today likely don’t give full transparency into our internal processes, our investments in social media and our tailored conversations with customers had an impact.  The traditional walls between customer and company have been broken down – and as more data and information flows freely – customers can and do take advantage of that.

Customers get to see what it is like to get near instant gratification on Twitter, or receive a more complete and artfully framed explanation behind a policy from a frontline rep (as opposed to ‘it’s just the policy.’).  And – no surprise here – they like it.

But, do they need it?  Or are we setting customer expectations that we may not be able to consistently meet?

As one attendee put it – ‘are we the ones setting the expectations or is it the customer?’  I think it’s a worthy question to ask, because if we are – how do we know if we are creating a highly valuable experience or a bunch of costly ‘nice to haves’ that actually won’t matter to long-term customer loyalty at the end of the day?

So, that got me thinking about a few other topics –

1- Social Media: There is so much data to show the wide (and growing presence) of the world’s population on social media platforms.  But, it’s use for customer service?  Given the debate we had on this blog a few months ago – seems like the jury is still out.

2- Online Customer Experience: We know that the customer increasingly prefers to self-serve on the web rather than call.  But what kind of online experience do they expect and what ensures they can successfully resolve their issue on the web?  We’ve done a little work on this in the past, and will revisit this topic in more depth through our first half 2012 research initiative.

3- Customer Data and VOC: There is so much data and customer voice to collect, but it’s often like searching for a needle in a haystack to reap true insights.  We’ve discussed ways to prioritize and focus these efforts to yield more actionable data, and CCC’s latest venture – CCC Loyalty View – is a unique way to aggregate that data and provide both actionable insights and advisory services to target high-impact improvements.

4- The Frontline Rep Role: With the remaining live contact volume at higher complexity, seems like the frontline rep has to adjust.  No longer can they focus solely on issue resolution or soft skills, but also have to possess greater ownership over their customer interactions and use their knowledge to provide in-the-moment advice.  Most of you are familiar with our most recent work on the topic – looking at an emerging skill set that is increasingly important for reps to have in today’s world.

What about you, Customer Service Buzz readers?  What do you think the implications of customer expectations today are for your role and your organization over the next few years?

CCC Related Resources:

• Social Media Topic Center

• Boosting Web Self-Service Stickiness

• How to Narrow VOC Scope

• The Next Frontier of Rep Performance executive summary | full study

More than 1 billion people around the world use social networks. Let’s pause on that for a second. ONE BILLION people. That’s more than three times the size of the U.S. population. It’s equivalent to the entire population of Africa.

There’s no doubt, then, that social media has changed the way customers interact, the way they access and process information, and the way they engage with brands. Customers today – both in professional and personal situations – want coherent and organized information, accessed simply and quickly.

Yet this preference for social networks doesn’t have to be confined to Facebook. Through company-sponsored online customer communities, companies can create internal social networks that provide benefits to both customer and company.

In fact, many service organizations have built web-based user communities to provide customers with an interactive platform to exchange ideas, collaborate with peers to ask questions, and access shared information. Since customers tend to trust peer advice, live communities often serve as a starting point for issue resolution and can even deflect contact center calls.

CCC’s latest research on effective customer communities highlights five benefits of user forums:

• Communities can reduce company costs by deflecting live call volume. Rather than calling the company directly, customers use the community as a sounding board for questions. CCC members, learn from a company that embedded its user forum into customer work flows – resulting in a 40% decrease in call volume.

• Communities allow companies to communicate with customers in a new way. CCC members, read about how reps interact with customers on the company community to help build customer trust.

• By monitoring content on user communities, companies can capture insightful information about customer and market trends. Since many of these trends may not be easily noticeable in day-to-day interactions, this creates a powerful incentive for companies to leverage communities for customer research.

• Companies can collect customer feedback through communities – without organizing focus groups or collecting survey responses. Leading organizations use this feedback to continuously improve forum functionality.

• Communities can build knowledge management capabilities. User-generated content posted on such forums can serve as a rich knowledge base to both customers and reps.

CCC members, review more of our findings to:

• Learn about different types of customer communities;
• Discover how leading companies sustain forum engagement by rewarding top contributors; and
• Find out how companies make decisions about when to intervene in customer forums.

Does your company have a web-based customer community? Tell us about it below.

Related CCC Resources:

• Building an Effective Customer Community
• Ensuring Consistent Community Activity
• Get Started in Social Media

CCC has partnered with Iconoculture to bring you the latest in global consumer trends.  Below is our bi-weekly update featuring the latest Iconoculture insights available now on the CCC site.

A recent survey of European shoppers found that 96% of UK customers are likely to speak up about poor customer service experiences, along with 95% of shoppers in Italy and 91% in Germany.  This is an alarming statistic for companies doing business in Europe – especially in light of recent technology that has drastically simplified the customer complaint process.

Not long ago, a customer who wanted to complain about a bad service experience had few options: hand-write a letter, send an e-mail, or make a phone call.  Complaining required a significant investment in both time and effort.

Thanks to social media, however, customer complaints are easier than ever. Not happy with the service you received from your airline? Quickly send a 140-character gripe to the company’s Twitter handle. Dissatisfied with a recent interaction with your bank? Tell the world about it on the company’s Facebook page. These websites provide a more convenient platform for complaining customers – and with 73% of European internet users now participating in social networks, it is crucial that companies pay attention to online customer content.

New research from Maritz and Evolve24 found that nearly 50% of customers who voiced their complaints to companies via Twitter expected a response, but only 29% received one. A majority of companies ignore customer complaints on social media, but the few who don’t face some interesting benefits to customer satisfaction.

When asked how customers felt upon receiving a company response through Twitter, 83% reported “liking” or “loving” the company’s decision to respond.  Nearly 75% were satisfied with the response.

There’s a huge opportunity here. Some European companies have already jumped on the bandwagon. Vodafone UK uses Twitter to address customer complaints in real time. German companies, including Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom, have also started answering consumer questions on Twitter.

What can companies do to manage customer complaints on social media?

• Empower reps to guide customers through the channel. Given the public nature of social media websites, it is important that companies have strategic rationale for responding to customer-posted content. CCC members, take a look at the USAF social media assessment tool to help your reps know when (and if) to respond.

• Ensure customer privacy. Leading companies limit responses to initial outreach, and then take the conversation offline to protect customers’ personal information. Citi, for example, introduced personalized Twitter accounts for reps to enable discussions with customers in a secure environment.

• Drive positive customer interactions. As companies have embraced social media as a new platform for customer contact, leading organizations have shared best practices for how to drive positive customer experiences in the channel. CCC members, learn from your peers about how to build and execute successful social media experiences.

How do you manage customer complaints in social media? Leave your thoughts below.

Relevant CCC Research

• Social Media Topic Center
• CCC-24/7 tweetview
• Social Media and Customer Service Podcast Series

Other Recently Posted Insights from Iconoculture:

• Europe Tough on Service
• Germans Tweet for Service
• Low-Effort Packaging
• Google Rates Retailers
• An App to Remind Elderly

Before jumping in, however, companies should consider the diverse social media landscape in Asia, as well as the cultural/local nuances of various regions:

1. Understand the Asian social media landscape – One size does NOT fit all: In spite of the growth of social media globally, Asia-Pac has more individual market differentiation than other global regions. For instance, in China, Japan, and South Korea, local sites feature local language and content to establish a critical mass of local users. On the other hand, in South-East Asian countries like The Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, global social communities like Facebook are amongst the most visited Internet sites.
2. Decode the Asian customer’s social media DNA: Local differences in markets are strongly mirrored in social media activity and behaviors across regions. To successfully service a customer, understanding regional and cultural norms is necessary.

For instance, when writing reviews, Koreans are most likely to share positive experiences whereas Chinese are most likely to share negative experiences. On the other hand, in Japan, public dissent or debate is frowned upon. To avoid public scrutiny, people use social media anonymously; they present themselves as who they want to be, and not who they are.

So to service the Asian customer, what is it that companies are doing differently to make social media an effective customer service channel?

1. Cultivate an internal team of social media global experts: AirAsia, a south-east Asian low cost airline, has global social media presence on Facebook, Renren, Twitter and Sina. Though they have a unified brand image, AirAsia takes an extra effort to localize; for example, they have set up 11 Facebook pages for different locations. As part of its social media global expert team AirAsia includes its top management, pilots, station managers, and other internal staff. It believes that employees know the AirAsia brand best, which allows them to respond faster, manage diversity, and strengthen its social media channel.
2. Create communication guidelines based on regional norms: Customizing communication to include local nuances creates greater impact. For example, to be effective in the Chinese social media world, reps/moderators should use relevant terms or analogies—or even leverage online celebrities (which is very popular in China). Additionally Asian languages are very different from English. To communicate effectively companies must ensure high quality translation to local languages. For instance, in Japan weak translation leads to customer isolation — a core reason for Facebook’s poor growth.

We would love to hear from you. What do you think companies should do to service Asian customers specifically through social media? What are you doing?

CCC has partnered with Iconoculture to bring you the latest in global consumer trends.  Below is our bi-weekly update featuring the latest Iconoculture insights available now on the CCC site.

If you’re part of the growing number of consumers that own a smartphone, you can’t wait to make use of the latest and greatest features that these gadgets offer—everything from voice-activated commands to real-time GPS navigation and face-to-face video calling.

But despite an overwhelmingly positive response to most new mobile features, consumers have very divergent views when it comes to one feature in particular: location-based services. These services refer to mobile technology that makes use of the geographical position of the device and its user; and as the mobile space has grown more social and connected to immediate information like time, location, and context, features like these have also raised some major privacy concerns for consumers.

While a recent Iconoculture survey found that only 10% of consumers had prior experience with location-based services, it also found that 41% of participants expressed zero interest in using location-based services, with concerns over privacy violations universally cited as the reason.

What this means for service:

As companies introduce greater functionality for mobile devices, the temptation to leverage information that could potentially improve the customer experience must be balanced against consumer fears of privacy invasion by ‘Big Brother’. This is especially true of older customers, who are much more likely to be skeptical of the benefits of sharing data about themselves with anyone, let alone a company.

Negative customer opinion about location-based services is part of a larger trend concerning customer distrust when it comes to emerging social media channels. What started as a fun way to share with friends has quickly given rise to a pervasive sense that we may just be sharing too much.

For now, service organizations should be sensitive to customer sentiment in this area and focus on proactively educating customers about the benefits and payoffs of sharing and openness, including the ability to offer more personalized service to meet the customer’s individual needs.

Other Recent Insights from Iconoculture:

• Living dangerously, Americans cut corners on healthcare costs
• With rising wages in India, companies eye the US for outsourcing needs
• KB Home brings solar powered homes to SoCal residents
• Google uncovers details about African American smartphone use

By Kirsten Robinson

Did you miss our webinar featuring what you need to know about social media?

If so, worry not—we’ve compiled key ideas and takeaways discussed during our Q&A with Cindi Freeburn, Director of Community at QVC, and Joanna Howard, Head of Strategy at BT. Cindi and Joanna told us how their companies are using social media as a customer service channel, including insights covering:

-Using social media to provide technical support

-How to measure the ROI of social media activities

-Whether reps should specialize in one channel or work across platforms

-Lessons learned and advice for using social media as a service tool

CCC members, find out the key insights you missed and learn how QVC and BT use social media as a customer service channel.

So imagine my disappointment when I tried to find some visual assistance (read: how-to videos) to repair my washing machine and only found the product manual on the company Web site.  I’ll get back to my washing machine in a minute, but first why don’t companies have how-to videos on their sites for customer support?

Now, if this were 2001 I could understand some of the common arguments for not putting video online:

1)      It’s expensive to create & upload

2)      It takes up a lot of space

3)      It’s slow to download for the user

Well, guess what?  None of those arguments hold water in 2011.

1)      Almost every device sold (smartphones, tablet computers, mini camcorders) records high quality video.

2)      Capacity on sites & computers is only increasing, and with the advent of Cloud computing this becomes even less of a concern.

3)      Everyone streams video from everywhere … smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.

So with those obstacles out of the way, what’s the holdup?  Why don’t companies help prevent phone calls from disappointed customers by uploading user-created videos of how-to videos?

Now, the conclusion of my washing machine repair story:  Even though the company Web site didn’t have any videos, I was able to find a user-submitted video (on a third-party site) on how to fix the washer (turns out there were a lot of baby socks clogging the drain) & I saved myself the cost of a repair bill, not to mention the time and energy to set-up the appointment & wait for the repairperson to show up and complete the work.

And that wasn’t the first time I’ve used user-submitted videos to make repairs (thanks YouTube!).  But why can’t I thank the company site?  It seems like such a no-brainer to load videos, even user-submitted ones, onto the site if it’ll help resolve customer issues & prevent live interactions.

Sites like Facebook & Google+ seem like the perfect place to house these videos, and, as my colleague mentioned in a recent post, Google+ offers a good spot for user-submitted videos with their Hangouts, but I haven’t seen many companies embrace the user-submitted videos that are already out there.  British Telecom is an exception, as they mentioned in a recent social media webinar that CCC hosted, that they’re planning to post YouTube videos to assist their customers with support.  But they are definitely the exception, not the norm.

We’ve seen companies use discussion boards to leverage customer-generated solutions, but not much in the way of video.  So what’s keeping your company from using these videos on your site?

A few weeks ago, to almost no hype or pre-arranged fanfare, Google launched a new social network, called Google+. On the surface, it looks and functions a bit like Facebook, but under the hood there are some important differences that could break Facebook’s unchallenged hold on the “strong-tie” social networking space.

There’s been a lot of Google+ analysis out there, some of which you’ve likely already read, so we’ll try to get at the most essential things to know by looking at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

First off, the good:

• “Circles” could be the best thing since the tweet. One of the key shortcomings of social networking so far has been the inability to, on one service, match varying levels of familiarity to sharing behavior. On Facebook, for instance, your stream is your stream, and it can be seen by anyone you’re friends with, unless you change your privacy settings, which can be time-consuming and hard-to-understand. The social networking space has adapted to this by fragmenting: LinkedIn handles professional relationships, Facebook handles personal relationships, and Twitter, for many people, handles informational relationships. But Google+’s “circles” concept allows easy relationship segmentation, separating out coworkers, friends, family, acquaintances, and any number of social categories from each other, allowing the user greater control over who sees what.
• A chance to re-set your online social network. For social networkers who have been around from the beginning (for instance, if you’ve had a Facebook account since 2003-4), the advent of Google+ is a chance to hit the reset button on your online presence. Just as we fall into familiar patterns of behavior in real life, spending tons of time on the same website for years can lead to a digital rut. As a data point: I’ve gotten burned out on Facebook, checking it only out of pure muscle memory, but in my few days on Google+ I’ve been much more engaged.
• The mobile experience rules. We’ve talked a lot about the importance of mobile on Wide Angle across the last year or so, and there’s evidence that it’s beginning to take primacy in marketers’ digital plans. Those marketers will (eventually) find a great partner in Google+, because the mobile experience is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s simple, clean, and uncluttered; on Android devices it’s a built-in app that leverages the phone’s hardware; for iOS devices, its an HTML 5 app that works extremely well given the limitations of in-browser apps.
• Hangouts are an engagement magnet. If the “hangouts” feature – which allows group video chat – takes off, those hours you spend on Facebook could turn into tens of hours on Google+. It’s also a bid to put the social network – formerly an aggressively personal concept – into multiple areas of life: it’s as easy to imagine group chatting colleagues as family and friends.

Now, the bad:

• That scale problem? Still not solved. One of the key limitations of social networks is an inability to have meaningful relationships beyond a certain number of friends/followers (around 150, in much of the literature). The circles concept, while it allows greater user control over sharing, doesn’t solve the problem of incoming information – it just makes it easier to compartmentalize.
• Where are the hooks? To get to scale, Google+ needs to figure out a way to pry people from the good-enough Facebook experience. There’s some evidence they’ll be able to do so: simple integration with GMail is probably good for a few million users alone. But G+ and Facebook aren’t complimentary; G+ looks to be designed specifically to replace Facebook as a dominant social network. Leveraging Google’s existing user base is a start, but won’t be sufficient to get people to switch – there’s got to be something more.
• Sparks doesn’t sparkle. One big piece of the Google+ promise is information: it claims it’ll do a better job of aggregating information, like news, than Facebook or Twitter. Part of how it’ll get there is “Sparks”, a section of the site where content is aggregated by user-input categories. It’s basically a glorified Google news feed, and its a sad disappointment in the area of content aggregation, which is seriously underexplored.

Finally, the ugly:

No place for brands – at least, not yet. Finally, this might be the kicker for brands eager to jump into a new social space. As of now, Google is discouraging brands from joining up, promising that brand pages will be available later this year. And I’d expect commercial rollout to be slow; Google+ offers the broader company plenty of value (user data, mostly) without needing to resort to branded pages.

Alright readers…what do you think?  What’d we miss?

In a recent blog written by Pete and Lauren, 55% readers voted for Social Media being a viable, long term customer service option. Given the growth of Facebook and Twitter accounts, the percentage of votes will probably only increase, if I had to guess. By linking social media channels with a unique objective (e.g. Twitter for broadcast notifications, and in-the-moment support; Facebook for engagement and discussions), companies are increasingly innovating on how they connect with the “socially-connected” customer to troubleshoot, engage, and build service differentiation. Here are some of my favorite examples of companies working with social media.

Facebook and Twitter are popularly used by the service industry for troubleshooting:

Mindful of Facebook’s viral nature, companies are linking complaints via social media with responses through traditional channels.

• A customer of home furnishing chain Pottery Barn, was fed up with the customer help line and in-store service, so she posted photos of a tabletop explosion on Pottery Barn’s Facebook Page. Within 30 minutes she received a call from a customer representative who worked with her to find a solution. This led to a negative experience turning positive, averting further negative comments on a public channel.

For Twitter, the brevity of tweets helps in responding quickly and defusing tension, if not always problem-solving.

• Airlines like Southwest and Delta use Twitter as an “information booth”, directing messages to other functions or sending Web site links where customers can find more information. Southwest Airlines helps novice fliers with queries around seat choice by referring such questions to its “tweeting pilots.” At Delta Airlines, staffers assigned to @DeltaAssist can also change reservations and issue tickets based on customer tweets.
• State Farm Insurance uses Twitter for in-the-moment support for its customers for problems like excessive hold time, refunds, and technical issues. State Farm uses it as a direct channel of communication, building credibility and positive word-of-mouth.

Facebook and Twitter also can help companies drive customer engagement through community building activities and by providing tangible value for customers.

• Australian telecom company Optus’ Facebook page is a lively page of company and customer interaction. Optus shares company and product updates, and posts relevant links, videos, and discussion questions driving customer opinions and debates.
• Hewlett Packard (HP) India’s Facebook page has a dedicated support tab for customers. Additionally, customers share problems and comments on the wall that are addressed by both users and customer reps; this is common across regional HP Facebook pages and garners huge appreciation from customers.
• Through Twitter, companies like online shoe and apparel shop Zappos, go the extra mile by providing customers with information not only on their product but also help in finding items they don’t carry.

Companies also use Twitter innovatively to create unique strategic advantage in the marketplace through customer service.

• A Twitter-powered customer service tool, Best Buy’s Twelpforce (Twitter + Help Force) allows users to directly connect with employees to ask questions, get advice, or solve problems. With over 12,000 requests answered in the first 3 months, Twelpforce is effectively catering to “unmet” needs of customers.
• Other companies like Citibank plan on using personalized Twitter accounts for reps to continue discussions with customers in a secure environment.

Your customers ARE talking about your service on social media. How are you planning to use Social Media to connect with them?

Related CCC Research:

• Getting Started in Social Media
• CCC 24/7 tweetview (free Twitter monitoring service for CCC members)
• Social Media and Customer Service