ECCCSA Finalists Demonstrate Real Innovation in Social Customer Service

ECCCSA Finalists Demonstrate Real Innovation in Social Customer Service

It was great to be a part of the judging panel for the annual European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards (ECCCSA) last week. We were treated to four excellent presentations from finalists, spanning both public and private sectors and representing technology, retail and financial services.

The common theme for the day was ‘personalisation’ – i.e. the leading brands in this space are really looking to engage with their social customers in an unscripted and often informal manner. Social agents are adapting their ‘tone of voice’ for each and every social interaction. Brands are looking to build strong, lasting relationships and a new generation of brand advocates.

From last year, we’ve seen a shift away from focusing mainly on response rates, response times and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), to new and innovative ways to engage across social media. There’s a lot more understanding of the need to track the customer journey across all contact channels and join up multiple customer ‘conversations’. Although, in some cases, the technology still needs to catch up!

In short, I felt it was worth outlining some of the really impressive innovations that we witnessed from these leading social customer service brands:

1. Tracking Social CSAT Scores

It was great to see one finalist asking for customer feedback after every social interaction. They encourage their social customers to complete a web-based survey and track a range of tangible CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) measures. It’s good to see brands starting to recognise the need to measure social CSAT scores and compare satisfaction levels against more traditional customer contact channels.

2. Shifting from Public to Private Channels

In the financial services sector this transition from public to private channels is absolutely vital to provide meaningful social customer service. It was impressive to see innovative ways to authenticate social customers and transition them to fully secure messaging platforms to resolve issues. We were glad to see the end of the dreaded automated response on Twitter advising customers to ‘send in an email’ for customer service issues.

3. Sharing Positive Customer Engagements

We’ve seen a number of blogs and industry experts talking recently about customer service being the new marketing. Well, today we saw evidence of this with initiatives like the ‘Wall of Fame’, where customer praise is shared both internally and across the brand’s Facebook page. This is not only a powerful tool for employee engagement and motivation, it’s also a fantastic source of free PR!

4. Proactive Follow Ups across Social

So… you tweet a brand and ask when xyz product is going to be available for purchase. You may well expect a response saying that xyz product will be available in 3 weeks. However, what really impressed the judges was that one of our finalists logs each of these questions and sets a reminder to re-engage with that customer on launch date. That’s a great example of proactive social customer service…

It was a real pleasure to witness such a range of innovations in the provision of social media customer service last week. All the finalists did a tremendous job in presenting their entry to the judges. I’m really looking forward to seeing the winner receive their award in June and can’t wait to see what new innovations we get presented with next year!