Social media to boost customer service in 2011

More than half of all Australian businesses (54%) will adopt social media as a customer service channel for the first time in 2011 with 71% investigating the use of Facebook and 53% reviewing Twitter as potential vehicles for propelling positive customer experiences. A further 42% also plan to launch a company-branded customer community as a new way of driving customer engagement.

That’s according to a survey conducted among IT and customer service professionals at the RightNow Asia Pacific Summit in November.

The survey found that 82% of organisations currently provide customers with phone support, 88% provide email support and 77% provide web support. 35% of organisations also provide web chat facilities.

The move to adopt social media in 2011 coincides with a transition to mobile self-service as smartphones become increasingly pervasive. 66% of organisations plan to increase their mobile self-service investment in the year ahead. While three-quarters of all business (77%) are reviewing the addition of mobile self-service to their existing customer service organisation and support channels in the year ahead. Driving the extension of self-service capabilities to handheld devices is the need to improve an individual customer’s experience, 66% stated this to be the case.

“The survey’s results are a real wake-up call for organisations of all sizes that don’t respond to new possibilities for enhancing their brand image and striving for market leadership. Providing a mobile experience, having a compelling Facebook presence, responding to your customer’s tweets, creating online communities and remaining at the forefront of customer service innovation will be the hallmarks for the organisations that succeed in satisfying the needs of individual customers in 2011 and beyond,” says Brett Waters, Vice President Asia Pacific-South, RightNow Technologies.

 According to Frost & Sullivan, 62% of all devices sold will be smartphones by 2015, up from 2% in 2009.