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White Papers & Case Studies
Social Media as a Customer Service Channel: Key Considerations
The Social Media as a Customer Service Channel: Key Considerations Whitepaper sets out a discussion, research findings and a Methodology for the establishment of Social Media as a Customer Service Channel. The content of the Whitepaper is based on Fifth Quadrant’s extensive primary research into multi-channel customer experience strategies and operations as well as Australian, New Zealand and global consumer research on channel usage and preference.
The paper is structured as follows:
- The evolution of Social Media as a customer service channel
- Defining Social Media as a customer service channel
- Usage and attitudes of consumers to Social Media as a customer service channel
- Social Media as an inbound channel
- Social Media as an outbound channel
- The future of Social Media as a customer service channel, and
- A strategic planning method for establishing Social Media as a customer service channel – the SocialServe™ model
Service Strategy Maturity: A Model for Business Performance
Within the customer engagement research fraternity, there is growing evidence that demonstrates that customer service is a significant driver of both customer advocacy and future purchasing behaviour. Organisations also recognise that improving customer satisfaction / engagement is a significant business challenge alongside other challenges such as increasing productivity.
Despite this growing evidence of the importance of delivering great customer service in driving business performance, organisations remain more focused on Marketing, Human Resource Management, Technology and Finance strategies than Service Strategy.
This Paper sets out the findings of a research programme that tested the hypothesis that organisations with a mature enterprise-wide Service Strategy have higher levels of business performance.
Why Service Matters for Government
Both academic and market research studies suggest strong links between Government customercentric service delivery, citizen effect and organisational outcomes. Those Government organisations which have adopted a transformational approach (Gartner, 2001) to service delivery utilising contact centre and online channels report to have:
1. Customer Effects including:
a) more effective relationships with customers; and
b) the potential to provide constituents with a better standard of living.
2. Organisational Outcomes including:
a) greater operational efficiencies;
b) a stronger Government brand reputation; and
c) a higher potential to influence voters’ preferences.
One of the defining truths underpinning a customer centric approach to service delivery is that Australia citizens want a relationship with Government, they want to be treated as a customer not as a ‘constituent’ or ‘citizen’ and they want this relationship to be facilitated through both good policy and effective service interactions.
This paper presents the case for ‘Why Service Matters’ for the Government sector. The paper will briefly profile the Australian and Government contact centre industry, discuss the customer demand for effective Government phone service, draw on global research supporting the ‘service shift’ in Governments and argue the case for change in service delivery for the Government sectors.
Service Centre Cultural Change Programme
Culture is simply defined as an organisation or team’s shared beliefs and behaviours related to their work. It is thus important to first understand what has shaped the existing culture prior to developing the new culture.
For the purpose of this Paper, we will suggest that the problem an organisation seeks to overcome is that the culture, or shared beliefs and behaviours of the serivce centre are not aligned to the future goals of the leader(s) or of the overarching corporation.
Fifth Quadrant Case Study: AustralianSuper: A Customer Service Transformation Story
AustralianSuper, one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds was faced with a challenge. With superannuation largely being a ‘low engagement’ product, and with customers contacting the organisation as little as once a year, the level of service offered to its customers was believed to be a ‘weakness’ with the current service model described as ‘transactional’. Given the competitive pressures from the large retail banks, AustralianSuper felt there was an opportunity for them to improve the level of service delivered to customers in order to differentiate and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.
AustralianSuper and their partner Superpartners joined forces to create a platform to enable this.
Case Study: EziBuy - Implementing Multi-Channel to Personalise Customer Service
Download this one page case study to read how New Zealand's leading online retail store, EziBuy, increased customer satisfaction scores and reduced average speed of answer by implementing multi-channels in their 70 seat contact centre.