Digitally Transformed Customer Service

It is very rightly said that if you don’t take care of your customers, somebody else will. Customers no longer wait in long call queues to get their queries answered. They simply post their experience on social media and online consumer forums from their mobiles in real-time and quickly spread the word about their experiences with millions of others in real-time. Organizations must re-align their internal processes to incorporate these new channels or face serious damage to their reputation. A new start-up called Akosha has introduced a complaint management and social CRM tool called OneDirect to do just that

- Preeti Gaur

The importance of customer feedback, positive or negative, can’t be taken lightly by any organization, more so in today’s age where the customer is much better connected through mobile and social media networks than ever before. So the feedback doesn’t just change the perception of one customer, but impacts all the others on the customer’s social media network, and the millions of visitors of online consumer forums on the Internet. Organizations therefore, can’t choose to ignore feedback from an empowered customer today. They have to transform their internal processes to ensure that they can access all the queries, feedback, and complaints coming from social media channels and online consumer forums, and integrate it with their existing CRM to handle them. Using emerging technologies to manage empowered customers is therefore a critical aspect of any organization’s digital transformation journey.

Mobile, connected and socially active customer

The customer today is more informed than ever before and empowered as well. All thanks to the emerging digital trends such as increased mobility with smartphone penetration, connectivity and exposure to social media networks. In this digital era, for example, if one has to buy a TV, he won’t ask his friends or family to make the choice. He would read reviews and customer feedback over the online portals and other online mentions of that product. The digital platform influences the users to make choices and drive decisions. A negative mention about the customer service experience on any digital platform will make the organization lose prospective customers as well. It can result in lost sales, as the consumers might switch to a competitor.

A unified interface that allows brands to directly engage with the customer at the source.

Customer service has thus become a competitive battleground, where the loss of one is another’s gain. Even a single customer has all the power to make or break an organization’s reputation. For instance, a guest at a new upmarket Italian food corner has all the power to impact the business of the food joint with a single Facebook post. On the other hand, a positive customer feedback is better and more promising as a marketing tool rather than a hefty marketing and advertisement budget. Organizations therefore, can’t afford to brush poor service quality under the carpet anymore, because the unsatisfied customer will simply pull the rug from under your feet by telling the whole world about it.

In order to create satisfied customers, organizations must have information related to the customer and his ecosystem as well – which includes his social and professional status. It is thus imperative for them to become digitally empowered with emerging technologies. Much has been done in the field of designing an appropriate Customer Relationship Management solution and customizing it as per the organization’s requirement. But, apart from having a robust CRM in place, that CRM has to be flexible enough to incorporate information coming in from social media channels. They need to address issues and satisfy customers at all touch points that have increased manifold over the last few years.

Report for customer’s interests & profession

Various software and tools are available that aid organizations in tracking and monitoring their social media mentions. Many startups are also venturing in this domain and developing innovative tools to enable organizations have a 360 degree view of their brand image. Akosha is one such startup that offers a Social CRM and Complaint Management Tool called OneDirect. The five year old startup has developed a solution to track of and monitor a brand’s mention on social media and other online public forums. It directs all customer queries, feedback, and complaints to the organization in a single interface for direct online customer interaction at source.

The software application also generates specific reports and trends that give detailed insight about the brand. For instance, it provides specific reports and graphs for gender split, interests and profession of the customers, Facebook summary, Twitter analysis, industry analysis (competition analysis), media coverage, top blogs and forums, etc. Such information is critical for CMOs to design marketing strategies for a brand’s products or services.

The solution allows the brand to view:

•    Online audience across all channels

•    What they think about the brand

•    How they respond to different type of content, PR, news or advertisement

The reports and trend analysis allows the brand to:

•    Track campaigns to calculate ROI on digital spends or PR,

•    Spend marketing budgets using data. Make content strategy around the audience, reach out to more audience, improve conversions etc,

•    Know the professions and interests of the audience.

Report for Twitter Analysis

According to Akosha, the solution has been able to curb the negative mentions of a brand on the social media networks in the range of 30-60%. It can also be customized as per a brand’s specific requirements and seamlessly integrates with an organization’s existing CRM. In addition to the social CRM, it can also act as a comprehensive CRM solution in case the company doens’t have or doesn’t want to integrate it into their existing CRM solution.