Manage clients’ online image, call centers told

CONTACT centers should use social networking tools as a “customer engagement strategy” as more people are resorting to the Internet to complain about services real-time, experts said.

Nitin Bhat, partner at Frost & Sullivan, told the Customer Contact 2010 conference yesterday customers are using multiple channels of communication to express their concerns. “Contact centers should be able to monitor all these channels and capture the voice of the customer. Companies should redesign their processes and corporate objectives,” he said.

Sandra De Zoysa, group senior vice-president for service delivery and enterprise of Contact Management Dialog in Sri Lanka, said contact centers should focus on “customers of the future,” or those aged 30 years old and below.

“[Half] of the population worldwide is under 30 years old. Social media is a great equalizer. These tools had demonstrated influence. This area is the most vulnerable as comments and feedback posted on these tools can influence peer decisions,” she said.

Some companies are starting to implement “online reputation management,” she noted.

“[Contact center] agents should engage themselves in such medium and study the products and services of their companies very well,” she added.

Rob Delnoij, director at SAP Asia Pacific, Japan and India, said: “It is more democratic now. Customers can freely post their thoughts about a product they bought or a service they just had.”

Rosario Cajucom-Bradbury, managing director of SGS Philippines, Inc., said customer management through social networking is the new trend. “When you say social networking, it’s not just Twitter and Facebook. We are implementing such tools through our corporate and technical teams. It is a vast segment of delivering quality customer service,” she said. — Aura Marie P. Dagcutan, Businessworld