In a recent survey by eGain it was found that 5% of 18-35 year olds use Twitter or Facebook before resorting to any other means of communication. Here is another finding from the survey: 47% of UK consumers will go online (email and web chat) to complain about a product or service rather than choose traditional methods of placing a phone call (33%) or writing a letter (17%). Email proved the most popular channel with 3 out of 4 consumers selecting email as a top two preference. It might be the time to consider extending your Social media touchpoints with a specific channel for Social media.

Two examples social media customer service

I live in the Netherlands and I have two Dutch case studies to highlight the importance of setting up social media customer service channels with a great deal of care.

The first one is a famous one, at least here in the Netherlands. It highlights the customer service procedures of telecom provider T-Mobile. In this example, the customer was appalled by the priority treatment he got through social media! Seems odd at first, but read on.

The second example is from the KLM airline. You can find a list of their social media channels here. I was lucky enough to have been recently invited to visit the main KLM support desk operation in the Netherlands. I was very impressed with their service levels, attention to detail, and especially with their quality assurance processes. Their levels of service are evident just by looking at the KLM Twitter stream. Their integration of Salesforce.com is superb in my opinion.

Managing performance levels with social media customer service

Managing the quality and service levels with customer service social media channels is not easy. Manual systems are often deployed. I have spent over 8 years running customer facing social media channels for my company and from experience I can say that you will get a fair number of customer related issues coming through your normal social media channels just because they are there.

It is important that you recognize this fact and make sure that your customer service teams know that you will be sending them the odd inquiry even if they do not officially have a process set up for handling social media customer service requests.

I am an admirer of the Spredfast tool and note that it has a specific report that can be used to track closure rates on customer service issues raised via your social media channels.

Social customer service infographic

I want to end this post with this infographic from oursocialtimes.com. It shows that social media is changing the landscape of customer service! Click it to view a larger version.

Are you making the best use of Social Media with your customer service?

Have you experienced the joy of contacting a company’s customer service team via Social Media? Does your company have customer service social media touchpoints?

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Image: jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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So.cl video parties

So.cl (pronounced “social”) is the new social networking site from Microsoft. I reviewed So.cl when it first appeared in this blog post, which I suggest having a look at if you are new to the concept of So.cl.

Video parties are just one of the activities within So.cl. They are fairly easy to set up. This blog post will describe 5 essential tips to note when you decide to create your first one.

To get started select the video parties button currently located on the right hand side when you login to So.cl. The video parties section has it’s own URL as well http://www.so.cl/#/party. You can create your own or view others created by friends or view one of the most popular parties which are happening at that time.

Tip 1 - Decide on a catchy but relevant name for your party

This will help to make your party stand out and also help people browsing the parties section to know if your party is relevant to them. The number of parties is increasing all the time, so this is a simple but important point. Have a quick look to see if there is already an existing party with a similar theme or name.

Tip 2 - Come prepared with a suitable selection of videos to pre-load in your party.

Be very selective to pick the very best quality videos that match your theme and title. Go for quality rather than quantity. If you include one or two poor quality selections just to have a suitable quantity, one of your invited friends or contacts just might see that video playing when they enter, as you cannot select a video that will show first for newcomers. The videos play in a loop, and you cannot pause them. However, visitors to the party can select a video from the selection to play next or add a video of their own.

You can add YouTube videos by entering the name copy pasted from YouTube (not the URL) into the search box in your new video party. I also suggest adding the name of the channel. This gives a good match that easily finds the exact video that you had in mind. Seems that YouTube is a much easier source to add videos from compared to Vimeo for example.

Tip 3 - Send some invitations!

You could just load up your videos and walk away. Some people might indeed browse and find it. Tip number 3 is to be pro-active, send invitations! You can use the invite friends button that is located on the right hand side of your video party.
The first choice is to post an update to your social stream, that is a good easy choice. The next choice is to send personal invites to your connected folks on So.cl. You have to do this one by one, so it can be a bit of a chore if you have a long list of people to invite.

You can also send email invites. This is how the invite will appear in the inbox of the person you sent it to:

Tip - 4 Monitor your party

No statistics yet, so pop back now and again to see how things are going. Your party could get hijacked and used as a haven for pop videos, which is not good for your invites to see when they thought they were about to see videos about water purification (a bad example, but I liked it). I assume that later on we might see private parties or options where the originator has control of what is added. We shall see.

Tip 5 - Publicize the video party link

My 5th and final tip might not be suitable in all occasions, but I had to mention it. I have found that video parties have their own URLs. So you can use other platforms to announce your new party. You can notify your network in Twitter, Google+, Reddit, Facebook, whatever! People who click on your invitation that have not yet joined So.cl will be presented with a page that new users would normally see, with Windows live and Facebook buttons to tempt them to sign up.

So if you are keen to try out video parties, try out my 5 tips and tell me if you thought of extra ones or just pass on your thoughts on the experience of attending your first So.cl video party.

Party on!

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The So.cl (pronounced “social”) new social networking site from Microsoft is now with us. You will find the So.cl exactly as that.. So.cl, so do not add .com in your browser. Many sites do not recognize it as a valid URL. I found a few that rejected it as being incomplete. That will change of course.

I did create a post about this in November 2011 when the first rumors where out that it was soon to be released. What I said then is pretty much what we have now. I am in So.cl as http://www.so.cl/#/@clive-roach

Here is a fun short YouTube video to learn about So.cl

So what is new about So.cl?

For me the main difference is that So.cl combines social networking and search. You can search for something, comment on it, and save it, then you can see what your followers think about it. You can you create even richer posts by clicking the more button to view extra images that can be selected to assemble a montage of visuals to accompany your commentary.

I can clearly see that the extra few minutes spent creating the montage is well spent as it makes your post stand out when viewed in the feed. I have seen some very create montages about topics I would not have selected to view if it were not for the well crafted montage!

The excellent visual approach is similar to the Facebook timeline and also the new Google+ mobile app view that I posted about recently.

You can also create a status update as a basic text statement, and then add rich content to it afterwards.

To add feedback to someone’s post you can click the smiley button in the same way as the +1 in Google+, and you can RIFF a post, comment on it and share it to Facebook or to email. Tagging is very important! New tags will create a new interest category. Using existing tags will add your post to the existing interest category.

To RIFF a post is to kick off a new search about an existing post, which you can then save as a new post. A RIFF is similar to a share in Google+, because the share in So.cl does not share it to your feed, it shares it out of So.cl to Facebook or email.

Finding new people and new topics

You can select the EXPLORE option to find categories that already exist. A easy way to get started on the people who have posted already who you might like to follow.

The build your feed option gives you a jump start to find interesting people to follow. You will find this option labelled “Find more” just under the section showing avatars of your followers. Google+ has a similar feature called “find people” in your circles section.

Let’s have a video party!

This looks interesting! I spent a fair while here enjoying the videos.

It is not that hard to jump in. Members suggest videos aligned with a theme and which one gets played next. It reminded me of a TV channel where you could phone up and request a video and wait for your video to bubble up to the top of the list. It is not just for music videos. Chris Voss (The one and only from the Chris Voss show!) had one of the first videos there explaining how to use the interface.

Login and account creation.

What seems odd here is the absence of Twitter? What is going on there? Windows Live and Facebook are the options.

You can also use Facebook and email to invite others

Start up problems - welcome to the So.cl Ladybird!

I was a bit astonished by the high number of bugs and failures. Maybe the stress test estimates were a bit understated? I saw a succession of messages from Microsoft:

• Message 1)
  Welcome to all of our news users. Thanks to the new, heavier load we’re seeing some site issues. Stay with us, we’re working on it.

• Message  2)
  Thanks for all the love and feedback on So.cl! We’re going to get to work fixing some issues you found, and open back up shortly!

• Message  3)
  Thanks for all the posts! Unfortunately we’re experiencing growing pains, please bear with us. Video Parties are working fine, maybe a good time for a music break:-)
• Message 4)
  Hey Soclistas, we’re sorry, we’re adding capacity quickly but the response is overwhelming (yeah!). Fixes on the way.
  
  Bless them!

We will soon see how So.cl will slot in next to, under or above Google+, Facebook and Twitter etc.

Early days. I assume we shall see an impact on how Bing will interact with So.cl. We know how Google+ and social search affects Google searches so will this be the same for Bing? I tries to see what affects the first posts had on the standings of the posts in Bing but it is way too early for that, so we shall look forward to seeing how things develop. For now, I will end with a picture of So.cl’s equivalent to the Twitter fail whale. It did frighten me the first time I saw it instead of a table of search results, but it does not bite!

See you in So.cl. Be sure to look out for me http://www.so.cl/#/@clive-roach

You can watch a video extract from this post;

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bitshare:

If you use multiple social networks, and are trying to incorporate your Google+ posts automatically to other platforms like Twitter, Facebook or even Myspace, you can do it. Sit back and relax, as you post from Google+ and let it auto-feed to your other networks with this new super easy solution.

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