Social media use is evolving rapidly. Users include almost any group or customer segment and social media is changing the landscape of customer service at an ever increasing rate. Customers are expecting to engage with organisations through channels of their choice leaving customer service with the challenge to work through multiple channels, such as Web, Facebook and Twitter as well as traditional agent based channels.
By embracing the challenges and opportunities of Social Media and Multichannel engagement, organisations can gain an edge in providing seamless high quality customer service. At the same time there is opportunity to improve delivery efficiency.
Timely access to relevant knowledge is key to delivering effective customer service. This apply regardless of channel. Pursuing an integrated strategy to multichannel customer service requires a solid foundation for the organisations knowledge base, through a social media knowledge management platform. The greatest opportunities for integration can be found in some specific areas:
Channel Specific Presentation of Content
Content managed within knowledge management tools can be optimised for delivery via multiple channels. Working with configurable templates allows knowledge to be defined and selected to be appropriate for each specific channel. Knowledge can then be pushed out to customers in a format that is appropriate for the channel. This approach will allow the core knowledge base to be used effectively by a wider range of users across a wider range of situations.
Sharing Knowledge Across On-line Channels
Providing access to your existing knowledge base via established social media sites such as Facebook can be easily achieved. The prospect of sharing your organisations core knowledge through social media channels may initially be daunting. By using social media knowledge management tools to index and filter your content, you have full control over which content can be viewed in each channel. The benefit of well managed knowledge sharing is that social media users will gain access to relevant knowledge from your organisation using a social media platform of their choice.
Accessing and Sharing Crowd Sourced Content
Much information and knowledge sharing takes place outside of organisational control. This is particularly true for consumer products and services, where specialist interest websites and forums offer well indexed access to product reviews, Q&A, analysis, user guidance, fault finding and other detailed information. Tapping into to user generated and crowd sourced information is a huge opportunity. The challenge is to manage the flow of information to merge the existing internal knowledge with external sources.
The knowledge management tool provides the ability to include external sources of information, from forums, websites or social media platforms, which can then be indexed and searched as part of the knowledge base. Automatic index processes ensures only appropriate new information is posted on these channels is included as searchable knowledge.
Invest in Social Media Ready Knowledge Management Tools
As the popularity of social media continues to rise, ensure your social media knowledge management investment provides the tools to ensure content is authenticated and fit for purpose for each of your customer engagement channels. Make sure tools are capable of indexing and working with knowledge from any source and format, internally and externally. Finally make sure your knowledge management tool integrates seamlessly with your customer service desk applications to push knowledge where and when it is needed.