Contact center software company Playvox In order to offer a true omnichannel customer experience, brands must assist their customers using the platforms they prefer. This commitment includes consistent availability via email, social media, chat, and phone.
Playvox, a cloud platform that helps quality assurance teams monitor agent performance and streamline processes for customer service, is designed to assist them. It also includes social media support.
Alex Bullen, Chief Product Office, stated that the company is increasingly seeing its customers adopt social media as an omnichannel business practice. Playvox has a mission that includes guiding companies through the complex process of transforming their CRM platforms to versatile omnichannel machines.
Bullen, a CRM Buyer consultant, said: “We see this as a brand’s effort to better serve its customers by supporting the way and when their consumers interact with them on social media.”
Embellishment Strategy
Social media integration can be achieved in a variety of ways. Bullen refused to comment on what might be the key component in integrating CRM platforms with social media. He did not say whether the integration of social media into CRM platforms relies solely on brand messaging or on customer responses.
He did, however, say that integration can be separated from existing marketing outlets for a brand. Social media can be used to enhance advertising campaigns.
Offering support through social media is smart business [to] “We want to be available in the channels that consumers choose,” he said.
Social Media and CRM: A Transformative Effect
According to McKinsey & Company, in October 2021, social media users numbered 4.6 billion worldwide. Adoption was averaged at 13 new users registering for their first social media accounts every second. Social media has become a major communication channel for brands and a place where they can interact with their customers.
Bullen noted in the same report that customers’ engagement with companies via social media has also changed. Social media was used by many customers as a way to escalate their complaints when traditional channels of service failed to resolve them.
“Today’s customers are increasingly using it for general requests, queries, and feedback — even compliments,” he said.
The pandemic was a major factor in the integration of social media with CRM. According to Hootsuite’s social media management platform, social media messaging increased 110% as a preferred customer service communication method during the pandemic.
Social media offers a wealth of opportunities to engage with customers, and improve customer service. Whatsapp crm integration can further enhance customer interactions by allowing real-time communication and seamless tracking of conversations within a single platform.
Social Integration is essential for CRM benefits
Bullen observes that today, brands must integrate their support strategies into social media. This should be evident to all organizations. Social media is where the consumers are and they expect to be able to respond.
The biggest advantage is that the customer’s experience will be seamless. In the past, when organizations treated social media as a separate channel — or when marketing, not customer support, managed it — any consumer interaction on social media remained separate and disconnected from other service experiences.
“If you fully incorporate social media into CRM, you can easily capture interactions on and offline social media to give support organizations a complete picture of the customer journey and other inquiries. You will also be able to see how issues were resolved,” explained he.
The agent can then use the additional information they have to offer a complete and coherent customer experience. It is a budget-friendly alternative to traditional voice support systems.
Playvox doesn’t track budgetary effects of social media integration. It is expected that the cost of social media integration will be lower than voice.
Practice What It Preaches
Zendesk, and Salesforce were among the first to integrate customer contact with their CRM systems. social platforms Twitter and Facebook to their CRM operations. Playvox has incorporated social media in its CRM solutions, even though it was not involved directly with these early transitions.
Playvox integrates social media into customer service to provide an additional benefit to customers of Salesforce and Zendesk.
Bullen emphasized that integration should be based on CRM best practices. He reminds clients that they should keep certain essentials in their mind as they work to provide omnichannel support. Addition of one channel should be the main driving principle, not trying to do it all at once.
“Add chat, for example.” “Make sure it’s going well, in terms of interaction, average response time and agent responses. Also, check how many chats a representative can have at once.” He urged.
Know the Strengths and Weaknesses of Your System
In order to develop a successful CRM strategy, it is important to pay attention to the different skill sets required by different communication channels.
A specific set of skills is required for traditional media like email or phone. But social media channels have their own unique requirements. The response of a customer service agent to a particular query could be visible to hundreds or thousands of people.
Brands must also ensure that they fully integrate social media. As part of that, they should also ensure their staff are fully trained to handle social media queries and to manage their workforce.
We often see brands being forced to do things unnatural with their workforce management [WFM] The system was designed for a world where voice was the dominant mode of communication. This no longer applies. It’s important to have WFM solutions that can handle channels such as social networks and are designed for today’s more complex, multi-step interactions.
Plan in Plain Sight
Bullen believes that customer expectations are a final element to consider when integrating social media into a business channel. Customers expect brands to be available outside normal business hours. This means that you need to be available at all times when people are on social media.
This is something you need to plan for. “A bad experience through a social media contest can be magnified very quickly,” he concluded.
