Verint Systems Blog

Congreso de Contact Center & BPO

November 15; Hotel Los Delfines, Lima, Peru

Social networking can play a powerful role in building and sustaining customer relationships¾and can change the way your organization manages its customer service operations.  On November 15 at 2:30 p.m., Greg Sherry—vice president, marketing and business development for the Americas—will explore “The Impact of Social Networking on the Contact Center.”  During the session, he will share case studies that highlight how forward-thinking companies are incorporating social networking concepts into their customer service programs, helping them make better informed decisions on sales, service and other operational issues.

This excerpt comes from an article on ITBusinessEdge.com.  Click here for the full article.
Originally posted on ITbusinessedge.com by Michael Vizard Sep 30, 2010 10:22:53 AM

One of the bigger challenges facing business managers today is the number of customer touch points they have to manage and monitor. Besides worry about what might be happening in, for example, a store or on the phone, there are now thousands of conversations taking place on social networks that can affect the business.

To address this issue, Verint Systems is adding speech and text analytics based on its own technology and technology from Clarabridge to its suite of tools for managing customer interactions across multiple channels.

According to Daniel Ziv, vice president of customer interaction analytics for Verint Systems, businesses scramble to get in front of a customer issue before it becomes a major problem. By including analytics in its offerings, IT organizations that use the Verint software can mine data collected from social networks, call centers and sales reports to identify potential issues.

The social media phenomenon is proving to be one of the most powerful forms of communication impacting brands. Customers are sharing thoughts on products and services, good and bad service experiences, and much more. This new social “word of mouth” is the number one decision factor of 20-50 percent of all customer decisions. Furthermore, social networking is most influential for first time buyers or when products are relatively expensive-the most important transactions for most organizations.

Facebook has more than 500 million global users, and Twitter has seen over 20 billion “tweets” of which 20 percent are estimated to be related to product and services requests. There is a shear mass of consumer-generated information that transpires and increasingly influences buying decisions. Marketing departments no longer own their corporate brands… the customers do!

This can pose a threat especially for organizations that have spent years building their brand. For a customer-centric enterprise, capturing and mining this new social voice of the customer is critical, yet separating the insights from the ‘noise” may be a daunting task. Once something goes social, it’s very hard to control.  See the full article here.

Products and services are becoming more complex, whether you’re evaluating a new insurance policy or the latest smart phone. Consumers can spend days reading reviews and comparing features and functionalities. However, there are also those customers who don’t have time for this level of research and simply rely on their gut feeling — which is another way of saying that brand perception carries great influence in today’s purchase decisions.

It takes years, a large investment, and a corporate culture backed by business practices built around innovation, quality, customer-centricity, and service excellence to establish a strong brand. The return can be very rewarding especially in today’s increasingly complex world. However, in the era of social networking, even strong brands can be undermined. The impact of social media has only proven that perception plays a much larger role in the power and vulnerability of a brand.   See the full article here.