A Twitter user bemoans AT&T service. A Facebook user mentions wanting to switch from Sprint to Verizon Wireless. A forum poster asks for recommendations on a wireless carrier.
Tapping in to those social media conversations to communicate with customers directly and try to prevent churn or boost sales offers a new role for social media, and In the Chat is one company trying to capitalize on helping wireless operators and other businesses do just that.
John Huehn, CEO of In the Chat, says that social media teams are moving away from being ensconced with public relations or marketing, and trending toward a role in customer experience management. Huehn spent 12 years with Canadian telecommunications provider Rogers, working at first in a call center and eventually managing the operator’s call center strategy and operations.
In the Chat will launch ITC Express on July 25, which is aimed at telecom companies, financial services firms and retailers. The cloud-based software-as-a-service solution scans and filters social media conversations in order to help companies gain sales leads, reduce calls into call centers, and improve retention.
Huehn said that getting intelligence from social media gives companies a real-time view of problems with their products or services that might go unnoticed for days or weeks with traditional systems.
He cited several case studies from In the Chat’s experience – including a wireless carrier that launched online pre-orders for the iPhone 4S at 6 a.m., but its website didn’t include the “S” on the white device option – so it looked as though not all options for the phone were offered. By 6:45 a.m., Huehn said, people were noting the discrepancy on social media and calling into call centers with questions. In the Chat identified the issue and notified the carrier, and the website was fixed by 11 a.m.
Call centers, Huehn said, are usually a carrier’s biggest cost and often outstrip marketing costs, running between $7 to $9 per call in to the center. In the Chat will be charging $350 for a month’s worth of a social media stream, or the analyzed posts for a particular brand. So, Huehn explained, a company like Verizon Wireless could buy its own stream in order to view customer opinion and arrange for CSRs to respond to posts of unhappy customers to try to resolve their issues and prevent them from churning – and it could also, say, purchase the streams for T-Mobile US, AT&T Mobility and Sprint, to look for unhappy customers for sales purposes.
“People don’t necessarily call their telecom provider any more to tell them that they’re cancelling,” he noted. “The intelligence … can show you who’s leaving, what customers are going to be peeved with you for. You can really drive down churn.” He added that information gathered from the social web can be used to inform decisions on products and services.
Huehn says that In the Chat has found that when users post on social media and a brand responds, about 60% of the time, the user will actually write back in response. A large-scale TV service provider that uses its solution, he said, gets about 1,600 to 3,000 leads per day, he added. In the Chat allows CSRs to respond in the same media in which the post was issued – so a Twitter response to a Twitter poster – and also provide click-to-call or click-to-chat capabilities so that the conversation can be continued more privately and securely for sales purposes.
“This is not a space that people need to be afraid of,” HUehn said.
