Comment (2)Service providers realize they need to separate themselves from the pack by offering a superior customer experience. In the age of social media, customer interactions happen over these platforms at lightning speed. The data over these channels provides insight into sentiment, location, network outages and more, giving service providers an opportunity to take relevant actions in real time, while also harnessing this data and contributing it to subscribers' profiles, which will allow for proactive and preemptive actions in the future.
To closely monitor and engage with customers over these social platforms, service providers must choose a social customer relationship management (CRM) solution that uses advanced analytics to make sense of the unique, unstructured data that comes across such channels and must have best practices in place to take full advantage of the plethora of social CRM solutions offered in the market today. For example, service providers must decide which departments will handle social CRM, marketing or customer care, decide which legacy CRM provider or new vendor will help with them with social CRM capabilities, and also make sure they have a social support presence.
Today, social CRM vendors for service providers range from BSS/OSS suppliers to traditional CRM vendors, to smaller SaaS players that are gaining market share. Despite the range of providers, it is clear that service providers need to be active on such channels, or they will miss out on possible support and engagement that will ultimately enhance the overall customer experience.
Heavy Reading’s latest report, Social CRM Best Practices for Service Providers, examines the leading drivers for social CRM, service providers' pain points that prevent them from having optimal social CRM procedures today, and the social CRM best practices of advanced service providers. The report also profiles 14 vendors that offer social CRM solutions to service providers.
— Sarah Wallace, Analyst, Heavy Reading
