Social Media and Customer Service Integration—Why Do It?

As a contact center manager, you're responsible for finding ways to enhance customer relationship management (CRM) practices at your organization. With the rapid consumer adoption of social media, it has become increasingly challenging for businesses to build long-lasting relationships with customers due to the multiple lines of communication that are now available. By integrating social media channels with your customer service system, you can improve your overall workflow, increase efficiency, and strengthen relationships. As this streamlined communications approach becomes the new normal, consumers will expect this high level of service from contact centers. Here's why you should integrate your social media and customer service efforts—and an effective way to do it.

The importance of social media in contact center operations

Social media has become a marketing tool, and more than 44% of small businesses are now using it to build brand awareness and drive sales. Moreover, advancements in mobile technology enable businesses to convert a curious social media user to a paying customer in a few simple steps. This simplified e-commerce experience has prompted many consumers to move their shopping habits online, with an estimated 2.05 billion digital buyers in 2020. It's not just major players like Amazon that are making online sales; small businesses are also using social media for customer acquisition and retention.

To reach more people and find new customers, businesses add more communication channels to their outreach efforts, which means that many no longer use the phone as the most common way to connect with customers. Instead, they communicate via email, direct messages on Instagram or Twitter, or automated chatbots (which also leverage email). This ability to connect in near real time makes customers feel that businesses are always accessible to them. Even businesses that sell physical products might be confronted with concerns about returns on Twitter or about available sizes on Instagram.

It can be difficult to track and manage customer interactions that are occurring on multiple platforms, especially if these conversations can't be viewed from one place. Adding to the challenge, customer requests might need to be sent to completely different departments. Managing all of these things from a traditional private branch exchange (PBX) is no longer feasible today. However, there are solutions to help you with your call center/social media integration.

Unified communications platforms make integration easier

In this era of digital disruption, unified communications platforms are helping contact center managers to succeed by integrating traditional communication channels, such as phone and SMS, with social media platforms. Through omnichannel routing, your team can provide both digital and voice support to customers while resolving issues in a simplified way.

Because many unified communications services are cloud-based, your team can also take advantage of intelligent interactive voice response (IVR) which allows you to manage and route inbound communications to the appropriate team. In addition, customer interactions can be directed to any device that's connected to the communications system, making it easier to work with remote teams. Service providers like 8x8 offer useful tools that help even further, such as an automated FAQ feature that allows you to easily answer common customer questions.

If you're interested in learning more about innovative contact center solutions that streamline your CRM processes, contact a member of our team today. Call center and social media integration is the future, and we want to help you be prepared.