Combine Social Media and CX to Listen and Respond to Customers

Social media is a powerful tool for connecting people across the globe. Now more than ever, consumers are reaching out to businesses through public social media instead of using traditional service channels, such as phone, text or web chat. This is especially true in the Middle East and Asia.

The challenge for many organisations is that their customer experience (CX) departments aren’t set up to scale this type of engagement. And that’s creating missed opportunities to build relationships with customers and prospects and connect data from across every touchpoint.

Consumers, particularly digital natives, continue to introduce new preferences for how they want to interact with businesses. Instead of dialing customer service directly, they often choose to reach out to businesses via public social media channels like X or WhatsApp — and they expect a response.

Whether it’s posting a complaint, asking for help or searching for information on a product, consumers don’t mind the public knowing what they have to say to — and about — a brand.

For many businesses, public social media channels are managed outside the contact centre. Often, this ownership is part of a company’s marketing department.

And the social media strategists that run these channels are charged with amplifying company news, monitoring conversations, and analysing their brands’ awareness and performance in the market. They’re not focused on providing great customer service — and they’re disconnected from other teams that are.

Further compounding the problem, most organisations rely on point solutions to manage their social media presence; these solutions aren’t integrated with their customer engagement systems and departments.

They don’t have the customer experience infrastructure to use social media as an effective service channel today.

For organisations to stay ahead and meet customers where they are, that needs to change. They need to provide proactive, connected service through public social media channels.

From a digital communications perspective, Middle East consumers’ adoption of public social media channels is a bit ahead of Europe, North America and other regions in the world. We’re anticipating other markets will accelerate their use in the near future.

Interact with Customers in the Channels That Matter

Instead of looking at social media as a tool for marketing, businesses need to expand their view. They need to see it as an important channel to engage and connect with their customers and prospects.

And they need to realise it’s a crucial and largely untapped opportunity to glean valuable customer data and business insights.

Companies of all sizes and geographies need to start thinking about how to integrate social media channels into their end-to-end customer experience strategy. This will require them to:

• Evaluate where their existing and potential customers are now and be prepared to meet them with proactive conversations versus one-way engagements
• Empower service teams with the tools and resources to effectively use this channel
• Connect the rich data and insights available on public social media channels with other service channels so they deliver contextual, proactive customer experiences — anywhere their customers are

To differentiate today, organisations need to orchestrate seamless experiences across all channels and deliver contextual engagement to customers no matter whether they interact with a brand.

Many call this a channel-less experience. It’s the notion that, as a consumer, whatever the channel you use, you should have the same experience.

Omnichannel, which is often siloed, is about offering all the channels — without necessarily creating connected, consistent experiences across them.

With a channel-less experience, you can start a conversation on WhatsApp and finish on the phone. And customer context carries it from one conversation and channel to the next — whether assisted by a person or a bot.

This road to a channel-less future includes public social media.

About Genesys

Every year, Genesys orchestrates billions of remarkable customer experiences for organisations in more than 100 countries. Through the power of our cloud, digital and AI technologies, organisations can realise Experience as a Service, our vision for empathetic customer experiences at scale. With Genesys, organisations have the power to deliver proactive, predictive, and hyper personalised experiences to deepen their customer connection across every marketing, sales, and service moment on any channel, while also improving employee productivity and engagement.

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.