Keys to Benchmarking Social Media Success in the Contact Center

By Natalie Romano

There are few other areas in a corporation where doing more work with less funds is most likely to be impacted than the contact center. Cutting back in contact centers can have a devastating impact on relationships with customers, who can now broadcast compliments and criticisms instantaneously using social media.

As customers increasingly use these tools, it is imperative that contact centers integrate new channels, such as email and social media capabilities. In fact, growing customer expectations are creating relentless pressure on contact centers to reduce wait times, improve first-contact resolution rates and achieve agent utilization targets.

Social media have changed the game. Customers have higher expectations than ever before, and social media directly affect how they view your company. It drives conversations – both inside and outside of the organization – regarding products and services, industry and customer trends and technology innovation.

Whatever the subject, multiple groups will likely weigh in. “Listening" to the market and engaging in the right conversations can help you spot issues and opportunities as they arise, perhaps even before anyone contacts your organization.

Benchmarking can be used to identify ways in which other organizations are using social media to improve customer service and measure customer satisfaction. The contact center is the ideal department to handle feedback on social networks and community sites because it is set up and staffed to handle large volumes of interactions across multiple channels, in real or near-real time.

The initial wave of social-media integration into the contact center has really only been taking place in the past year or so, and the metrics are still being defined. However, metrics that companies are beginning to monitor include mentions of a company and its products or services on social networking sites; responses to blogs and Twitter posts regarding the company; and use of tweets to communicate directly with the contact center.

Keys to Benchmarking Success

First, it is important to clearly define the scope and objectives of the benchmarking effort. Next, develop a solid data foundation in the areas to be benchmarked, and make sure that the evaluation team understands the company’s historical performance in those areas.

Communications regarding the benchmarking effort should be broad, regular, frequent and delivered to many levels within the organization. The process of developing recommendations based on the initiative should involve all affected operations and be agreed to by as many stakeholders as possible. Here are some activities that are critical to realizing value from benchmarking efforts:

• Develop a system to create actionable measurements that align with the business
• Define customer models to improve performance and end-to-end process measurement
• Assess readiness for managing change and introduce the benchmark program
• Monitor performance results and make recommendations for performance improvement
• Prioritize improvement initiatives by strategic need and track performance against targets
• Develop a disciplined approach to ongoing performance improvement

Finally, unqualified senior management support is essential. The APQA study identified a strong correlation between the success of benchmarking efforts and the degree of management and financial support behind the effort. The payback from benchmarking was far greater at companies that provided adequate support than at companies that didn’t support the effort with both executive sponsorship and funding.

Natalie Romano is a managing director at Avaya, Inc .  She leads the Avaya Professional Services Strategic Communications Consulting team, which focuses on business, operational, and technology issues associated with customer contact centers and enterprise unified communications.