Over the last 6 months there has been a lot of activity in the market with cloud-based offerings from players such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco. Microsoft & IBM are bringing their collaboration & productivity suites online with Microsoft Online services and LotusLive services. Both players are making investments in infrastructure as well as channel & support readiness to push these solutions to the market and slowly bringing them to the different markets in Asia Pacific. In November 2009, Cisco announced their decision to play in the Email market with a cloud-based solution called Webex Mail (based on the PostPath acquisition).
Enterprise communications moving to the cloud is a clear trend in the industry, as demonstrated by the fast growth of conferencing services industry in Asia Pacific (the market is over $340 million in 2009, and growing at healthy double digit growth rates, based of Frost & Sullivan) and also discussed in my previous blog post on UC trends in 2010, and also . Driven by the larger trend of cloud services & renewed interest in opex models and lower TCO propositions (thanks to the economic recession), the Hosted Email market is rejuvenating and looking ready for a second innings.
In the past the Hosted Email market has been dominated by local service providers, internet service providers and web-hosting players. The local SPs & ISPs would host an email system (either MS Exchange, or some Unix-based system) in their data center, and offer a hosted email service to their SMB customers. The web-hosting players really targeting the small-end of the market (less than 50 mailboxes) would see success by throwing in mailboxes with website hosting services for free or minimal cost. The price points for Hosted Email were very competitive when compared the on-premise options of Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes. Despite this, Hosted mailboxes as a % of total mailboxes in Asia Pacific is less than 10%. The Hosted Email services offered by the SPs, ISPs & Web-hosting players were not regarded as enterprise-grade. Issues with data security, reliability of the the service, and loss of control with an outsourced model were top challenges that led to the limited growth in the past. Large enterprises were rarely even considering Hosted email as an option and continued to invest in on-premise email solutions.
With the entry of Microsoft, IBM and Cisco in the Hosted email services market, one can expect the consideration rate for Hosted Email by large enterprises to increase substantially. The impact of Google's launch of Gmail in 2004-05 with an infinite mailbox starting at 1 GB for consumers is being felt now in enterprise email user requirements. Enterprise users like the larger mailbox sizes, and IT teams are looking for ways to reduce software license, maintenance & support costs.
Based on some recent interactions with enterprise CIOs, it is clear that if there is a smooth migration path that can be offered to take their On-premise Email to a Hosted model in a secure and reliable manner then many enterprises would be willing to make a switch. Microsoft & IBM dominate more than 75% of the CPE email market in Asia Pacific, and hence having a cloud services option by these two vendors would definitely help drive this market. Apart from these two biggies, networking & telephony giant Cisco is also offering Hosted email service called Webex Mail. Cisco has a large installed base of large enterprise customers that use Cisco's Unified Communications applications as well as Webex conferencing service. Having a Hosted email option bundled as part of the larger UC deal could be considered by some enterprises. All this will not happen in 2010, and it is also clear that not all large enterprises and not all users (within a large enterprise) would migrate to the Hosted option, but one can definitely expect the penetration of Hosted Email in the large enterprise segment to grow strongly in the next 2-3 years. Vertical industries such as Education, Manufacturing, Professional Services & Hi-Tech are possibly the early adopters. Many of these verticals have deskless workers and part-time workers and these would be sweetspot for deploying a cost-efficient, scalable & flexible Hosted email solution, before rolling it out within the larger enterprise. Cisco, Microsoft & IBM can be expected to drive market education efforts to increase the awareness of Hosted Email services and its benefits, and help clear some of the perceived concerns about reliability, security & control.
In 2009, more than 500 mailboxes segment contributed less than 10% of the total Hosted Email opportunity in Asia Pacific in 2009, with most of the action happening in the 100 - 250 mailbox segment. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco are focused across all horizontal market segments for their Hosted Email offerings, however, one can expect Microsoft, IBM, Cisco to drive adoption from mid-to-large enterprises, while players like Google and Zimbra drive the mid-market enterprise (100-500 mailboxes) segment, except the Government & Education vertical. The small end of the market will continue to be dominated by web-hosting players, local SPs & ISPs.
With the contribution from the large enterprise segment expected to increase while the rest of market continues to grow, the Hosted Email market in Asia Pacific is set to see a strong CAGR of close to 20% over the next 4-5 years.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
UC Trends in 2010
Unified Communications (UC) entails unifying the different communication applications such as voice, email, instant messaging, conferencing & collaboration to deliver productivity gains for the users, better team collaboration and increased agility for the enterprise.
The ultimate aim of unified communications is to embed communications into business processes to deliver quicker and better decision making, enhanced collaboration across geographically diverse teams, and to improve overall efficiency in the business process to make the enterprise more agile and competitive. In order to achieve this, the multiple communication applications that operate in complete silos need to be integrated with one another, and also integrated with business applications.
Key Highlights for UC Market in 2009
From the get-go it was clear that 2009 was going to be a tough year for most industries, and the Unified Communications market was no exception. Given the recession and lower IT spending by enterprises, the Unified Communications market expecting a decline of 6.6 percent over 2008.
2009 saw a significant drop in spending on telephony infrastructure, with the telephony market expected to decline by over 30 percent over 2008. Apart from a slowdown in spending, price erosion also contributed to the overall revenue decline in that market.
The year saw creative financing schemes, attractive migration programs, aggressive application bundling and competitive pricing in the market. While many enterprises did bite into these vendor initiatives, others decided to put some of their infrastructure decisions on hold or delay them by a few quarters.
The silver lining for the Unified Communications industry was the Conferencing & Collaboration market is expected to see a strong growth of 13.1 percent in 2009. The recession brought along with it travel budget cuts which meant more investment in collaboration software and services.
As predicted last year, consolidation in the vendor landscape continued in 2009 with Avaya acquiring Nortel Enterprise, and more recently Logitech-LifeSize, and Cisco-Tandberg. The impact of all of these acquisitions will be felt in 2010.
Predictions for UC Market in 2010
2010 is expected to show some recovery and enterprises are expected to refresh their communications infrastructure and adopt Unified Communications. Frost & Sullivan expects the Unified Communications market in Asia Pacific to grow by 4.4 percent in 2010.
We believe that communications in 2010 and beyond will be increasingly:-
•Rich Communications – Communications in 2010 will be increasingly rich with Video. Growth in Video is expected to be in excess of 16 percent in 2010. Adoption of video conferencing has been on the rise in the Asia Pacific region. TelePresence market has shown good take-up from large enterprises, while boardroom and desktop video solutions are also seeing penetration across enterprises.
•Collaborative Communications – Collaboration is a top-of-mind priority for most CIOs and investments in technology that enables their enterprise to be more collaborative, and agile are of high interest. Web conferencing has seen strong growth over the last few years, and is expected to see a growth over 25 percent in 2010. For most enterprises, moving towards Unified Communications entails embracing a more collaborative communications environment, be it via audio conferencing, web conferencing or simple the ability to connect with the person at the right time on the right device through their Presence status. Enterprise Instant Messaging application is also expected to see continued growth in 2010. Solutions such as Google Wave, which brings together elements of Email, Instant Messaging and Collaboration, will make some impact on the market in 2010, although mainstream adoption of such solutions would only be in a 2011-2012 time frame.
•Social Communications – A more recent trend driven by consumer adoption of web 2.0 applications such as social networking. The idea of having a Facebook-like application for the enterprise was being discussed for the last 12-18 months, and in recent weeks we have seen announcements by vendors such as Cisco and Salesforce.com to offer enterprise social networking based collaboration platforms. Players such as IBM, Cisco and Salesforce.com, as well as other niche players are participating in this new market place.
Using social media for customer communications and customer service is expected to gain traction in 2010. Given the nascent stage of the market, the adoption of enterprise social collaboration platforms might be limited in 2010, however awareness and education amongst enterprises is expected to increase. Leveraging social media for customer service is expected to see some traction in 2010.
•Cloud-based Communications – Communications is increasingly moving to the cloud. Adoption of UC-as-a-Service picked up steam in 2009. Local as well as Global Service Providers have become aggressive with their hosted communications service offerings such as Hosted PBX, Hosted Conferencing and Hosted Messaging. Pure play conferencing service providers such as Intercall, Cisco Webex, Premier Global Services have seen good growth in 2009, and are continuing to see interest from enterprises. Hybrid deployment models of On-Premise and In-the-Cloud will emerge in 2010 and enterprises will choose which applications will be on-premise and which ones should be in the cloud. Vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel are working with service providers to deliver their solutions on a hosted basis. Microsoft is expected to launch Microsoft Online in Asia Pacific in 2010, further spurring the market place.
•On-the-go Communications – Mobility continues to be a business need and adoption of mobility solutions is expected to continue in 2010. Solutions that provide the ability to access all forms of communications from the mobile device are expected to grow in 2010. Soft phone clients on mobile devices, to mobile collaboration clients and mobile email are seeing good traction in the market. As the end-point evolution continues from analog phones to digital phones to IP phones, today the user has the option for a hard IP phone on the desk, soft phone on the desktop and soft phone client on the mobile. While the hard phone on the desk might still be prevalent for the next 2-3 years, the adoption of soft phones is seeing strong growth in Asia Pacific.
Core communication applications such as IP telephony and Email will see flat to marginal growth in 2010. IP migration projects will renew in 2010, and growth is expected to return to the IP telephony market, but price points would still be under pressure. Commoditization of these core communication applications will continue in 2010, and focus on applications will be important.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the Unified Communications Market Opportunity* in 2010 is expected to be worth slightly over US $4.45 Billion, growing at 4.4 % over 2009.
*Note: UC Market Opportunity includes Enterprise Telephony, Email, Instant Messaging (Unified Client), Unified Messaging, Conferencing & Collaboration (Audio, Video & Web), Mobility, Presence & Integrated UC Applications, and Core Contact Center Applications.
The ultimate aim of unified communications is to embed communications into business processes to deliver quicker and better decision making, enhanced collaboration across geographically diverse teams, and to improve overall efficiency in the business process to make the enterprise more agile and competitive. In order to achieve this, the multiple communication applications that operate in complete silos need to be integrated with one another, and also integrated with business applications.
Key Highlights for UC Market in 2009
From the get-go it was clear that 2009 was going to be a tough year for most industries, and the Unified Communications market was no exception. Given the recession and lower IT spending by enterprises, the Unified Communications market expecting a decline of 6.6 percent over 2008.
2009 saw a significant drop in spending on telephony infrastructure, with the telephony market expected to decline by over 30 percent over 2008. Apart from a slowdown in spending, price erosion also contributed to the overall revenue decline in that market.
The year saw creative financing schemes, attractive migration programs, aggressive application bundling and competitive pricing in the market. While many enterprises did bite into these vendor initiatives, others decided to put some of their infrastructure decisions on hold or delay them by a few quarters.
The silver lining for the Unified Communications industry was the Conferencing & Collaboration market is expected to see a strong growth of 13.1 percent in 2009. The recession brought along with it travel budget cuts which meant more investment in collaboration software and services.
As predicted last year, consolidation in the vendor landscape continued in 2009 with Avaya acquiring Nortel Enterprise, and more recently Logitech-LifeSize, and Cisco-Tandberg. The impact of all of these acquisitions will be felt in 2010.
Predictions for UC Market in 2010
2010 is expected to show some recovery and enterprises are expected to refresh their communications infrastructure and adopt Unified Communications. Frost & Sullivan expects the Unified Communications market in Asia Pacific to grow by 4.4 percent in 2010.
We believe that communications in 2010 and beyond will be increasingly:-
•Rich Communications – Communications in 2010 will be increasingly rich with Video. Growth in Video is expected to be in excess of 16 percent in 2010. Adoption of video conferencing has been on the rise in the Asia Pacific region. TelePresence market has shown good take-up from large enterprises, while boardroom and desktop video solutions are also seeing penetration across enterprises.
•Collaborative Communications – Collaboration is a top-of-mind priority for most CIOs and investments in technology that enables their enterprise to be more collaborative, and agile are of high interest. Web conferencing has seen strong growth over the last few years, and is expected to see a growth over 25 percent in 2010. For most enterprises, moving towards Unified Communications entails embracing a more collaborative communications environment, be it via audio conferencing, web conferencing or simple the ability to connect with the person at the right time on the right device through their Presence status. Enterprise Instant Messaging application is also expected to see continued growth in 2010. Solutions such as Google Wave, which brings together elements of Email, Instant Messaging and Collaboration, will make some impact on the market in 2010, although mainstream adoption of such solutions would only be in a 2011-2012 time frame.
•Social Communications – A more recent trend driven by consumer adoption of web 2.0 applications such as social networking. The idea of having a Facebook-like application for the enterprise was being discussed for the last 12-18 months, and in recent weeks we have seen announcements by vendors such as Cisco and Salesforce.com to offer enterprise social networking based collaboration platforms. Players such as IBM, Cisco and Salesforce.com, as well as other niche players are participating in this new market place.
Using social media for customer communications and customer service is expected to gain traction in 2010. Given the nascent stage of the market, the adoption of enterprise social collaboration platforms might be limited in 2010, however awareness and education amongst enterprises is expected to increase. Leveraging social media for customer service is expected to see some traction in 2010.
•Cloud-based Communications – Communications is increasingly moving to the cloud. Adoption of UC-as-a-Service picked up steam in 2009. Local as well as Global Service Providers have become aggressive with their hosted communications service offerings such as Hosted PBX, Hosted Conferencing and Hosted Messaging. Pure play conferencing service providers such as Intercall, Cisco Webex, Premier Global Services have seen good growth in 2009, and are continuing to see interest from enterprises. Hybrid deployment models of On-Premise and In-the-Cloud will emerge in 2010 and enterprises will choose which applications will be on-premise and which ones should be in the cloud. Vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel are working with service providers to deliver their solutions on a hosted basis. Microsoft is expected to launch Microsoft Online in Asia Pacific in 2010, further spurring the market place.
•On-the-go Communications – Mobility continues to be a business need and adoption of mobility solutions is expected to continue in 2010. Solutions that provide the ability to access all forms of communications from the mobile device are expected to grow in 2010. Soft phone clients on mobile devices, to mobile collaboration clients and mobile email are seeing good traction in the market. As the end-point evolution continues from analog phones to digital phones to IP phones, today the user has the option for a hard IP phone on the desk, soft phone on the desktop and soft phone client on the mobile. While the hard phone on the desk might still be prevalent for the next 2-3 years, the adoption of soft phones is seeing strong growth in Asia Pacific.
Core communication applications such as IP telephony and Email will see flat to marginal growth in 2010. IP migration projects will renew in 2010, and growth is expected to return to the IP telephony market, but price points would still be under pressure. Commoditization of these core communication applications will continue in 2010, and focus on applications will be important.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the Unified Communications Market Opportunity* in 2010 is expected to be worth slightly over US $4.45 Billion, growing at 4.4 % over 2009.
*Note: UC Market Opportunity includes Enterprise Telephony, Email, Instant Messaging (Unified Client), Unified Messaging, Conferencing & Collaboration (Audio, Video & Web), Mobility, Presence & Integrated UC Applications, and Core Contact Center Applications.
Building Blocks for a Social Media Customer Engagement Strategy
...Continued from previous post - Press 1 for Twitter
Building a Social Customer Engagement strategy is becoming increasingly important for enterprises, however, enterprises need to be wary of the challenges that come with a social media customer service channel. Social Customer Engagement is fairly new, and is unlike the other customer service processes where we have metrics, benchmarks and best practices to improve our processes. Including Social Media channels as part of the customer service process requires a thorough assessment of the customer base & existing customer contact processes, and the need to build a new set of processes & programs.
Key building blocks for a social media customer engagement strategy would include:-
a) Define Objectives
It is important to clearly state the objective for having a social media customer engagement strategy. Is it to disseminate information, engage with customers in conversations, pro-actively offer support or collaborate on ideas? Once we define the objectives, then the other aspects of the strategy can be explored.
b) Identify Social Channel
An assessment of the customer base and the objectives should define which social channels should be used. Different social channels serve different objectives. Twitter is good for broadcasting messages, promoting discount offers, and quick in-the-moment customer support. So Twitter is a good channel if you have a customer or partner community to broadcast pertinent information, and also respond to customer queries and conversations. Facebook on the other hand is better for customer collaboration and rich media sharing. If the objective is to engage with customers and collaborate with them on ideas, then a channel like Facebook is more apt. The option of creating your own social network or social platform for customers to communicate with one another & with the enterprise also serves the same objective. Using channels such as Youtube is good either in tech support environments where product demos, or troubleshooting videos can be shared. The objective in this case would be product support & training. Other social channels such as Wikis & Blogs are also effective, if the customer requires more deeper information into the query.
Like the multi-channel approach in today's contact center, the best approach for social channels would also be to choose a few channels rather than one channel, and target different customer groups.
c) Define Social Media Engagement Process
Any social media customer engagement strategy will require active participation on social channels. In order to ensure active participation, there needs to be clarity on (1) Content Creation process and (2) the Social Participation policy.
Content Creation process involves deciding who creates the content that needs to be posted on social channels to respond and engage with customers. Should the PR teams be involved, or is Marketing supposed to take the lead if it is product specific, or should there be a separate team within the contact center that is empowered to respond to social media queries/issues? It is important to have a process that can deliver quick responses to these queries. While social media is not like a live voice call with a 2-5 minute response time, the expectation of response time on social channels would be within a day, if not a few hours (depending on the nature of the query; the process of screening mentioned above will also help determine the urgency of response). Including Training & Knowledge base for social media responses to help expedite the response process would also be critical.
Social Participation policy, similar to the content creation process, is about identifying who is authorized to post/participate on behalf of the enterprise - Is there a need to have a separate pool of empowered agents for this task or would the PR team be involved? The creation of a consistent social front for the enterprise i.e. a twitter account, facebook page, youtube channel, etc. would also be part of this process.
d) Participate - Listen, Screen & Engage
Once the social channels have been established, the next step is to participate in conversations. The recommendation here is to first listen to what are customers talking about, what are the negatives & positives, what products/services are in discussion, which customer segments are active, etc. Once we Listen to these conversations, the next step would be to Screen which conversations require participation - which customer segments, which negatives, which product/service areas, etc. After the screening process, comes the important step of Engaging with the customer. In order to Engage, the enterprise should be able to respond to comments directly, post messages on social networking sites, and provide a regularly updated blog/wiki for future references.
This process of Listen, Screen & Engage is being enabled by several emerging technologies that can be embedded into existing contact center environments of some leading vendors. The ability to have a queue of social media queries or cases, and being routed to available agents can be achieved by emerging technologies. However, as is the case with most innovations, the barrier is not the technology but the process.
e)Measure & Monitor
The last and very important step is measuring the impact of social interactions and monitoring the feedback, revenues or other target metrics. ROI for social media is a topic of high interest these days. Different enterprises enter social media for different reasons, and hence their approach to justify the time and resources is very different. Some ways of measuring success of a social media engagement strategy can be (i) measuring the extended customer reach & community (i.e. number of followers or fans), (ii) track increase in search engine volumes, (iii) track the success of promotions that are delivered via the social channels, (iv) track user comments to see shift in customer perception of the enterprise brand.
It is important to have a clear idea on the objectives so that one can work towards measuring & monitoring whether the objectives are being met or not. There are several free and paid tools available to monitor activity on social channels that can be used to help enterprise contact centers monitor social media customer engagement & interactions.
These building blocks will help define a clear strategy for social media engagement with customers. As enterprises embark on their very first journey of engaging with customers on social channels, one must be aware some of the challenges that exist today:-
1) Many Social Channels - There are many social channels, and hence the need to integrate the channels, and use different channels for different customer segments & functions. Focus on core social channels that are applicable to your customer base.
2) Half-Hearted Approach - There are quite a few enterprises who are embarking on social media customer engagement strategies only because "everyone else is on it". A half-hearted approach could have a severe backlash as well. Once a social channel for customer interaction has been established, quick response and frequent updates are critical to sustain the channel.
3) Silo-ed Approach to Social Media - Discussion of embarking on social media is happening by different teams within the same enterprise. The Marketing team, the Corporate Communications/Public Relations (PR) team, as well as the Customer Service/Contact Center team are all looking to experiment with social media. If this social channel is opened by any of these teams, it has an impact on the other team as well. Despite that, these teams are not actively talking to each other to bring forth a common social media strategy.
4) Early Days, Lack of Standards - Social media is a recent phenomena, and there are no standards that have been set in terms of technology or processes. Hence, one can expect some teething trouble for enterprises that embark on this journey.
Having a Social Media Customer engagement strategy will no longer be a choice in 2011-2012. Early adopters have already embarked on this journey in 2009. In the Asia Pacific region as well, enterprises have started to use social media to connect & engage with their customers. 2010 will definitely see more activity from enterprises to experiment with social channels, and by 2011-2012 one can expect best practices and standard technology applications to emerge that will drive the industry forward.
Building a Social Customer Engagement strategy is becoming increasingly important for enterprises, however, enterprises need to be wary of the challenges that come with a social media customer service channel. Social Customer Engagement is fairly new, and is unlike the other customer service processes where we have metrics, benchmarks and best practices to improve our processes. Including Social Media channels as part of the customer service process requires a thorough assessment of the customer base & existing customer contact processes, and the need to build a new set of processes & programs.
Key building blocks for a social media customer engagement strategy would include:-
a) Define Objectives
It is important to clearly state the objective for having a social media customer engagement strategy. Is it to disseminate information, engage with customers in conversations, pro-actively offer support or collaborate on ideas? Once we define the objectives, then the other aspects of the strategy can be explored.
b) Identify Social Channel
An assessment of the customer base and the objectives should define which social channels should be used. Different social channels serve different objectives. Twitter is good for broadcasting messages, promoting discount offers, and quick in-the-moment customer support. So Twitter is a good channel if you have a customer or partner community to broadcast pertinent information, and also respond to customer queries and conversations. Facebook on the other hand is better for customer collaboration and rich media sharing. If the objective is to engage with customers and collaborate with them on ideas, then a channel like Facebook is more apt. The option of creating your own social network or social platform for customers to communicate with one another & with the enterprise also serves the same objective. Using channels such as Youtube is good either in tech support environments where product demos, or troubleshooting videos can be shared. The objective in this case would be product support & training. Other social channels such as Wikis & Blogs are also effective, if the customer requires more deeper information into the query.
Like the multi-channel approach in today's contact center, the best approach for social channels would also be to choose a few channels rather than one channel, and target different customer groups.
c) Define Social Media Engagement Process
Any social media customer engagement strategy will require active participation on social channels. In order to ensure active participation, there needs to be clarity on (1) Content Creation process and (2) the Social Participation policy.
Content Creation process involves deciding who creates the content that needs to be posted on social channels to respond and engage with customers. Should the PR teams be involved, or is Marketing supposed to take the lead if it is product specific, or should there be a separate team within the contact center that is empowered to respond to social media queries/issues? It is important to have a process that can deliver quick responses to these queries. While social media is not like a live voice call with a 2-5 minute response time, the expectation of response time on social channels would be within a day, if not a few hours (depending on the nature of the query; the process of screening mentioned above will also help determine the urgency of response). Including Training & Knowledge base for social media responses to help expedite the response process would also be critical.
Social Participation policy, similar to the content creation process, is about identifying who is authorized to post/participate on behalf of the enterprise - Is there a need to have a separate pool of empowered agents for this task or would the PR team be involved? The creation of a consistent social front for the enterprise i.e. a twitter account, facebook page, youtube channel, etc. would also be part of this process.
d) Participate - Listen, Screen & Engage
Once the social channels have been established, the next step is to participate in conversations. The recommendation here is to first listen to what are customers talking about, what are the negatives & positives, what products/services are in discussion, which customer segments are active, etc. Once we Listen to these conversations, the next step would be to Screen which conversations require participation - which customer segments, which negatives, which product/service areas, etc. After the screening process, comes the important step of Engaging with the customer. In order to Engage, the enterprise should be able to respond to comments directly, post messages on social networking sites, and provide a regularly updated blog/wiki for future references.
This process of Listen, Screen & Engage is being enabled by several emerging technologies that can be embedded into existing contact center environments of some leading vendors. The ability to have a queue of social media queries or cases, and being routed to available agents can be achieved by emerging technologies. However, as is the case with most innovations, the barrier is not the technology but the process.
e)Measure & Monitor
The last and very important step is measuring the impact of social interactions and monitoring the feedback, revenues or other target metrics. ROI for social media is a topic of high interest these days. Different enterprises enter social media for different reasons, and hence their approach to justify the time and resources is very different. Some ways of measuring success of a social media engagement strategy can be (i) measuring the extended customer reach & community (i.e. number of followers or fans), (ii) track increase in search engine volumes, (iii) track the success of promotions that are delivered via the social channels, (iv) track user comments to see shift in customer perception of the enterprise brand.
It is important to have a clear idea on the objectives so that one can work towards measuring & monitoring whether the objectives are being met or not. There are several free and paid tools available to monitor activity on social channels that can be used to help enterprise contact centers monitor social media customer engagement & interactions.
These building blocks will help define a clear strategy for social media engagement with customers. As enterprises embark on their very first journey of engaging with customers on social channels, one must be aware some of the challenges that exist today:-
1) Many Social Channels - There are many social channels, and hence the need to integrate the channels, and use different channels for different customer segments & functions. Focus on core social channels that are applicable to your customer base.
2) Half-Hearted Approach - There are quite a few enterprises who are embarking on social media customer engagement strategies only because "everyone else is on it". A half-hearted approach could have a severe backlash as well. Once a social channel for customer interaction has been established, quick response and frequent updates are critical to sustain the channel.
3) Silo-ed Approach to Social Media - Discussion of embarking on social media is happening by different teams within the same enterprise. The Marketing team, the Corporate Communications/Public Relations (PR) team, as well as the Customer Service/Contact Center team are all looking to experiment with social media. If this social channel is opened by any of these teams, it has an impact on the other team as well. Despite that, these teams are not actively talking to each other to bring forth a common social media strategy.
4) Early Days, Lack of Standards - Social media is a recent phenomena, and there are no standards that have been set in terms of technology or processes. Hence, one can expect some teething trouble for enterprises that embark on this journey.
Having a Social Media Customer engagement strategy will no longer be a choice in 2011-2012. Early adopters have already embarked on this journey in 2009. In the Asia Pacific region as well, enterprises have started to use social media to connect & engage with their customers. 2010 will definitely see more activity from enterprises to experiment with social channels, and by 2011-2012 one can expect best practices and standard technology applications to emerge that will drive the industry forward.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Press 1 for Twitter, Press 2 for Facebook ...
Social Media has been a leading phenomena in the last 3-4 years. Facebook has grown from some 12 million users in 2006, to nearly 400 million in early 2010. Don't even try calculating the growth on that. Its BIG! There are lots of such data points that suggest that social media is beyond hype, and is becoming very much the manner in which people are interacting, communicating and participating on the web.
I discussed about Social Networking in the Enterprise in my previous blog post. Enterprise Social Networking is still in its infancy, and such solutions will need to pass the test of the CIO, the CFO and ofcourse time. But there is one aspect of social media & social networking that will and is increasingly being accepted by the Enterprise today - Using social media for customer engagement.
There are many definitions for social media, so let me add one more - Social media is an online platform for users to share, participate and engage in conversations (both monologues & dialogues) with friends, like-minded individuals and everybody else. With social media, it is as easy to create content, as it is to consume it.
Social Media brings about a distinct shift in the Customer service world. This shift is rooted in the definition stated above. In a traditional customer service environment, either the customer calls the contact center i.e. the customer gets in touch with the enterprise to complain, ask or notify or the contact center calls the customer i.e. the enterprise gets in touch the customer to notify, request/threaten or upsell. It is foolish to think that this communication is the only communication that a customer has about the enterprise. Before calling the contact center, most customers would either have "googled" the query, discussed with their peers (increasingly over the web), or shared their frustrations with the world (most likely on some form of social media). Imagine a frustrated passenger, who had to search for the lost baggage claim process on google, then ask his friends on facebook if they knew the call center number for lost baggage, and then tweeted about how bad his flight experience has been. After all this, he calls the contact center - the happy agent on the other end does not have the slighest clue what is coming his way when he picks up that call. Social Media changes this. Social Media enables enterprises to hear, engage and participate in customer conversations that are not happening only when the customer calls the contact center, but happening the other 90% of the time when the customer talks about your enterprise with friends, like-minded individuals or everybody else.
In today's social web world, neither does the customer need to get in touch with the enterprise, nor does the enterprise need to get in touch with the customer to hear the customer. The power of social media provides enterprises the ability to listen to customer conversations, and pro-actively offer support, way before the call reaches the contact center.
Social Media is on the rise in Asia. Of the top 30 countries with most Facebook users, 7 were from Asia Pacific (Australia, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore). Despite the growth, some enterprises in Asia & Worldwide are still questioning why social media is important for customer service. The popularity of "United Breaks Guitars" is a clear reminder of the impact that social media can have on the reputation and business of an organization. In the words of Jeff Bezos, customers now use the internet as a "mega phone" to tell everyone what they think about our product & services.
A Social Customer Engagement strategy can be beneficial in many ways to the contact center:-
a) Ability to provide Pro-active Customer Care, hence improve Customer Satisfaction
b) Connect with the customer using the channel they use most, similar to the principle used in the multi-channel approach with voice, email, web chat, etc.
c) Make customers your service agents, by getting customers to respond to customer queries on the social web
These benefits lead to a strong value proposition for the enterprise:-
a) Create customer communities to increase stickiness & loyalty
b) Monetize social channels to deliver promotions & targeted campaigns
c) Disseminate information to a wider or targeted audience in real-time & cost effective manner
Building a Social Customer Engagement strategy is becoming increasingly important for enterprises, however, enterprises need to be wary of the challenges that come with a social media customer service channel. Social Customer Engagement is fairly new, and is unlike the other customer service processes where we have metrics, benchmarks and best practices to improve our processes. Including Social Media channels as part of the customer service process requires a thorough assessment of the customer base & existing customer contact processes, and the need to build a new set of processes & programs.
More on the building blocks for a social media customer engagement strategy in my next post...
I discussed about Social Networking in the Enterprise in my previous blog post. Enterprise Social Networking is still in its infancy, and such solutions will need to pass the test of the CIO, the CFO and ofcourse time. But there is one aspect of social media & social networking that will and is increasingly being accepted by the Enterprise today - Using social media for customer engagement.
There are many definitions for social media, so let me add one more - Social media is an online platform for users to share, participate and engage in conversations (both monologues & dialogues) with friends, like-minded individuals and everybody else. With social media, it is as easy to create content, as it is to consume it.
Social Media brings about a distinct shift in the Customer service world. This shift is rooted in the definition stated above. In a traditional customer service environment, either the customer calls the contact center i.e. the customer gets in touch with the enterprise to complain, ask or notify or the contact center calls the customer i.e. the enterprise gets in touch the customer to notify, request/threaten or upsell. It is foolish to think that this communication is the only communication that a customer has about the enterprise. Before calling the contact center, most customers would either have "googled" the query, discussed with their peers (increasingly over the web), or shared their frustrations with the world (most likely on some form of social media). Imagine a frustrated passenger, who had to search for the lost baggage claim process on google, then ask his friends on facebook if they knew the call center number for lost baggage, and then tweeted about how bad his flight experience has been. After all this, he calls the contact center - the happy agent on the other end does not have the slighest clue what is coming his way when he picks up that call. Social Media changes this. Social Media enables enterprises to hear, engage and participate in customer conversations that are not happening only when the customer calls the contact center, but happening the other 90% of the time when the customer talks about your enterprise with friends, like-minded individuals or everybody else.
In today's social web world, neither does the customer need to get in touch with the enterprise, nor does the enterprise need to get in touch with the customer to hear the customer. The power of social media provides enterprises the ability to listen to customer conversations, and pro-actively offer support, way before the call reaches the contact center.
Social Media is on the rise in Asia. Of the top 30 countries with most Facebook users, 7 were from Asia Pacific (Australia, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore). Despite the growth, some enterprises in Asia & Worldwide are still questioning why social media is important for customer service. The popularity of "United Breaks Guitars" is a clear reminder of the impact that social media can have on the reputation and business of an organization. In the words of Jeff Bezos, customers now use the internet as a "mega phone" to tell everyone what they think about our product & services.
A Social Customer Engagement strategy can be beneficial in many ways to the contact center:-
a) Ability to provide Pro-active Customer Care, hence improve Customer Satisfaction
b) Connect with the customer using the channel they use most, similar to the principle used in the multi-channel approach with voice, email, web chat, etc.
c) Make customers your service agents, by getting customers to respond to customer queries on the social web
These benefits lead to a strong value proposition for the enterprise:-
a) Create customer communities to increase stickiness & loyalty
b) Monetize social channels to deliver promotions & targeted campaigns
c) Disseminate information to a wider or targeted audience in real-time & cost effective manner
Building a Social Customer Engagement strategy is becoming increasingly important for enterprises, however, enterprises need to be wary of the challenges that come with a social media customer service channel. Social Customer Engagement is fairly new, and is unlike the other customer service processes where we have metrics, benchmarks and best practices to improve our processes. Including Social Media channels as part of the customer service process requires a thorough assessment of the customer base & existing customer contact processes, and the need to build a new set of processes & programs.
More on the building blocks for a social media customer engagement strategy in my next post...
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