1. Hello, my name is @SITatSafeco. How can I assist you today?

2. When asked “What are the principles to customer service and positive customer experience?” Answer:  Listen  Express empathy  Resolve the issue These same principles apply in any social media conversation.

3. A recent survey by Nielsen Online showed that social networks and blogs are now the fourth most popular online activity, ahead of personal email.

4. CLOSED CONVERSATIONOPEN CONVERSATION  One-to-One interaction  Online agents required to respond to call or IM chat. SME’s unable to engage immediately.  No opportunity to take conversation to another channel.  Limited capability to create knowledgebase to share internally & externally.  One-to-Many  Agents can choose which conversation to engage in. SME’s can engage directly.  Opportunity to DM customer to continue conversation over private channel.  Source of knowledge and experience to leverage.

5. CLOSED CONVERSATIONOPEN CONVERSATION  Call Center = Cost Center  Subject to wait time.  Longer Average Handle Time (AHT) to resolve issue.  One and done. No further involvement by agent.  No public identity for others to relate with.  Call Center = Branding Tool  Immediate response from agent.  Minimal handle time to resolve issue.  Able to see impact to other customers  Ability to provide public, transparent face to your customer service.

6.  How will you receive traditional and social media requests for help? Perform a social media audit to understand where your customers are talking about products like yours, and set up a monitoring system attuned to those platforms.  How will you triage your social media messages?  How will you route and escalate your social media messages?  How is that different (or not) from how you treat traditional e-mail and phone support?  How much automation do you want?  Do you use a hub-and-spoke system? If so, who is the hub — your social media manager or community manager?  Are you giving Twitter responsibilities to existing phone and e-mail support reps, or are you hiring specific Twitter response teams? (This will largely depend on the volume of mentions you have and the size of your business.)  How do they work with the rest of the customer service organization?  You also need to track workflow statistics on messages — social as well as traditional — and relate them to your success metrics. You need to have a unified reporting dashboard that integrates statistics for both kinds of support.

7. “An army of social-media watchers may prove to be a very expensive undertaking for a tech company focused on the bottom line”. Ensure that social media integrates into the overall customer care strategy. In other words - “you need to make sure one hand of your customer care strategy knows what the other hand is doing to ensure a cohesive, effective system”.

8. Although on its face, it appears that customer care through social media can generate sufficient cost savings through:  Elimination of call centers  Primary applications are free Companies are realizing that the opposite are true:  Call center personnel can enhance the brand to those that still choose this channel  Twitter & FB are free, but to monitor, filter and analyze the feed is a costly endeavor

9.  How effective would Social Media be for the support needs of mission critical and first respondent customers ?  Will more product and service providers go onboard with the new approach to CS or will they stay the status quo and remain open to public ridicule?

10.  Promoting a positive brand image and solving customer problems with less cost than phone or email service.  Better customer relations management to enhance sales and marketing opportunities.

11.  RightNow-- Customer Service meets social media ttp://www.rightnow.com/files/whitepapers/RightNow-Social-Contact- Center-White-Paper.pdf ttp://www.rightnow.com/files/whitepapers/RightNow-Social-Contact- Center-White-Paper.pdf  PCWorld “Tech Support goes Social” (article) http://www.pcworld.com/article/224336- 2/tech_support_goes_social.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/224336- 2/tech_support_goes_social.html  Parr, Ben (2009/05/09), HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-customer- service/http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-customer- service/  Ogneva, Maria (2010/06/29), HOW TO: Better Serve the Social Media Customer Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/06/29/social-customer- service/http://mashable.com/2010/06/29/social-customer- service/  Pieraccini, Roberto (2011/05/05), HOW TO: Build a Mobile App for Better Customer Support Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/05/05/customer-support- mobile-app/