Response to: “AT&T operators should answer more social media calls”

This is a response to this article that I found through a retweet by @tfamous from @D_Hong:

I certainly won’t argue the “image value” of recent appearances of social media in customer service, but articles like the one from The Huffington Post’s Catherine Ventura fail to recognize the costs associated with introducing a full-blown new channel for customer service. From the article:

“Is anyone from AT&T on Twitter?” I tweeted several weeks ago, “I have a horror story.”

The silence was deafening, despite the fact that there are at least six Twitter accounts that feature AT&T’s blue-striped sphere as their avatar. Granted, with a foreboding Tweet like that, I might not have wanted to respond either, but I’m a customer, so AT&T should have been paying attention.

I have to admit I was perplexed that that the AT&T sphere is not participating more actively in the Twittersphere. – Catherine Ventura, The Huffington Post

At a company like AT&T, where there are millions of customers that need support and customer service each month, the implementation of a new customer support channel is a major strategic decision which could cost millions of dollars to implement. Any corporation undertaking this sort of effort will want to do so  in a way that is supportable, sustainable and consistent. But more importantly, as I mentioned in my previous post on the subject of Twitter, there is an emerging shift from reactive customer service to proactive customer relationship building through social media that is practically demanded by Ms. Ventura under the terms of her customer relationship with AT&T.

I am reading every day now about the use of Twitter in the context of customer service. I have a very techno-centric view of customer service due to my experience in the contact center technology field and I recognize the challenges that non-telephony, real-time interactions will present in the contact center - especially for large corporations.

My view of the “[insert social media site/service here] for customer service” dilemma is that multi-channel contact centers are simply an albatross to many large corporations. Different companies that I have worked with over the years have implemented email and web collaboration with varying levels of success, largely due to a lack of strategic direction prior to the implementation. A properly planned and executed multi-channel integration can reap significant ROI and improve customer satisfaction, while half-measures are almost certain to be an ongoing challenge from a service level and customer satisfaction perspective.

I’ll point to a great article by Richard Grigonis, Executive Editor, IP Communication Group on TMCNet.com about Unified Communications in the Call Center. This article brings up a multitude of valid points about UC in the contact center and throughout the enterprise, and I think many of these points translate directly to the challenges of social media for customer servce. From the article:

“The point is, how much do you let your agents do with this technology? In the past, contact centers were fairly ‘locked down’ with your people and what they did. How much more do you let them work with this and in this way, because it starts to change all of the metrics that affect how you want to run your business. So you must think through your metrics concerning how you want to run your business before you go and implement all of these new things.” – Jim Kraskey, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Calabrio

Social media as a channel in the customer service contact center is so new that it still has the “new car scent” hanging about it. Most companies have not completely figured out how to leverage technologies that have been available for years, like email and web chat - with great effectiveness. In order for companies to attach themselves to the social media as an interaction channel, someone must develop reliable and defensible metrics for social media interactions and the tools to track and compare them to the better established customer service channels. The success stories you read about every day from the social media gurus reference “success stories” like @ComcastCares pale in comparison to the deafening silence of the vast majority of corporations with well established customer service departments. At this stage, Comcast is still building its social media discipline. Their efforts started as an experiment - a cautious “dipping of toes” into the new media channel waters. The hype around Twitter has brought these experiments to the public’s attention through overwhelming media attention and continuous recycling in the “Twitterverse.” I applaud the companies that have found early success providing customer service via social media. Surely their example, their lessons learned, and their ultimate ROI will all be subjects of discussion for years to come.

I am a self-proclaimed gadget geek, techie and early adopter when it comes to my personal life. But - to Ms. Ventura at the Huffington Post - corporations have budgets, staffing issues, accountability, legal issues, and much more to contend with before they can fully embrace social media. Can you blame AT&T for protecting their brand by securing strategic accounts on Twitter before they are fully ready to provide customer service through those channels? Or is there some unwritten #tweetiquette on this subject that I am unaware of?

I am a Sr. Principal at eLoyalty (a Cisco Partner). The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent eLoyalty’s positions, strategies or opinions.