2014 Social Customer Engagement Index Executive Summary The 2014 Social Customer Engagement Index marks the fourth year in which Social Media Today has invited employees to share how their employers are integrating social media tools and strategies to improve customer experiences, especially when it comes to service and support. This year 1258 respondents participated in the survey. Key Takeaways from the 2013 Survey As companies gain experience, further integrate social into service processes and teams, and align social service strategies more closely with their overall customer engagement strategy, they are seeing more positive impact from their efforts. Additionally, a greater number of service interactions are taking place over social channels. But even as the percentage of social service interactions increases, it still lags far behind traditional service channels like email and phone. The move to provide mobile customer service is accelerating and should continue to do so in the foreseeable future as customers operate more of their personal and professional lives through a plethora of devices, including wearable devices. Effective resource allocation will continue to be central to social service success as companies continually fight to keep up with customer expectations for better experiences. Optimizing in the face of an ever- changing mix of devices, tools, platforms and technological literacy will only become more challenging, even as experience with social service grows deeper. It s the nature of the current environment, and it will only accelerate over the next few years, particularly for organizations looking to integrate social from a strategic, process, and team perspective. Overall, Facebook remains the most used and most effective social channel for customer engagement from a service perspective, but companies who operate their own branded communities find those to be just as important as Facebook and more important than Twitter. Over time, these owned communities should allow companies to build deeper, more intimate relationships with customers, as long as they continue to facilitate peer- to- peer engagement and provide relevant, timely information whenever it is needed.
Speed of engagement will play an increasingly important role in creating great customer service experiences, and companies that focus on providing speedy responses on a consistent basis should create win- win scenarios for the customer base and the response times calls for alignment of processes, teams and strategies and of course a greater percentage of investment dollars being used on the right technology pieces to provide a solid foundation on which to build. Finally, companies will maximize their odds of social service success if they make sure the strategy is a meaningful, well- connected part of the overall customer experience strategy. To that end, the organization should create a culture that allows that customer experience strategy to grow and stay aligned with customer behaviors, activities and expectations over time. Below are some additional high- level overviews of important findings from the survey. Key Data Points from 2013 Index 15% of companies say 25%+ of customer service inquiries are initiated over social channels (35% say less than 5% do) 27% say it takes them less than an hour to respond to questions/issues on social channel 14% say their company has been integrating social into customer support for more than 4 years 52% say Facebook is most effective social channel for customer service Twitter follows at 25%, then Linked at 8% Owned communities are most effective for 7% Hootsuite use among respondents tripled year over year on the way to becoming the most cited monitoring tool used. Radian 6, the most cited tool from 2012, dropped by 38% in 2013. Strategy 81% say social customer service strategy is integrated into overall social strategy of the organization 55% have fully integrated their support teams (no separate team for social service support) 25% say they leverage customer service insights for non- customer service related activities in a structured fashion Mobile Service 50% of those surveyed said their company provides customer service via mobile devices, up from 38% in 2012 52% of those surveyed whose organizations are building customer service apps for mobile devices are creating mobile-
friendly websites, vs. 36% who are creating native ios/android mobile apps Results 32% say they have seen very positive impact from social on customer service goals and objectives 16% say they are very satisfied with their company s efforts to engage customer on social networks for service and support General Trends Over Time: Year- Over- Year Comparison With the completion of the 2013 annual index, a number of interesting temporal trends begin to emerge. We review these below. As illustrated above, there has been a steady and significant trend of support interactions occurring increasingly through social channels: Only 35% of respondents say their company has less than 5% of support interactions taking place over social, compared with 57% in 2011. Roughly twice as many people say they are seeing 11-15% of interactions taking place on social. Over three times as many people report 16-20% of interactions occur via social channels. Greater numbers of people report more than 20% of interactions happening over social channels in 2013, compared with 2011.
Looking at the impact social support is having on service goals and objectives, the upward trend in reporting positive impact is matched by the downward trend in those reporting no noticeable improvement. In fact, between 2011 and 2013, the 10% drop in those reporting no noticeable improvement is almost completely offset by the 11% increase in those reporting either a positive or very positive impact from social support initiatives. Given these trends, it seems safe to say that over time, as more experience is gained, goals and objectives will benefit from an expansion of social tools and strategies into customer service/experience initiatives. been no increase in the proportion of respondents who are very satisfied with company efforts, and overall, the numbers for those reporting some level of satisfaction are unchanged. There seems to have been a shift, however, from disappointment to neutrality, with the proportion of people reporting a level of disappointment decreasing over time, and the proportion reporting a neutral opinion increasing. With the rapidly changing landscape of social, mobile and cloud technologies along with even more rapidly changing customer expectations it s not too surprising that respondent satisfaction levels are not increasing as quickly as other areas. The following chart of major challenges faced by social support initiatives may help to further clarify: While most other aspects of the survey are trending positively over time, some interesting results emerge with respect to overall satisfaction with company efforts to integrate social into customer support efforts. Despite the aforementioned trend towards reporting more positive impacts on goals and objectives, there has
While there s been significant improvement in areas like determining key performance indicators, the main obstacle continues to be figuring out how to optimally allocate resources. Well over 40% of respondents say this continues to be a serious impediment year- over- year. Resource allocation can take the form of people, team configuration, training, tools and financial investment. How companies determine resource allocation can determine how employees develop and implement processes and procedures when engaging customers which also plays into how satisfied employees are with how things are going. Insights from the Very Satisfied Group Among those who answered the question about their satisfaction with their organization s efforts to integrate social into service, 16% said they were very satisfied. When comparing these respondents to the overall population some key points stand out. While there are several data points that show those very satisfied with company efforts in social service track closely with the overall survey population, it can t be ignored that this group is more than twice as likely to also report very positive impact from these efforts on service goals and objectives. Additionally, they are much more likely to respond quickly to service inquiries, while handling a higher percentage of those requests via social channels. They are also more likely to work in integrated teams of people, have social integrated into traditional service processes, and have a structured process for leveraging customer service insights in other areas of the business. The Impact of Being a Fully Integrated Organization In 2013 we were curious about the extent to which social service was integrated into the fabric of the organization. In order to capture this we added a question that asked if the social service strategy was integrated into the organization s overall corporate social strategy to improve customer experience. Since we added questions last year to track if social tools and strategies had been integrated into traditional support processes and if support teams were integrated, we were able to assess the possible impact of integrated teams, processes and strategies. 240 respondents indicated that their organizations have integrated teams, processes and strategy. We call these fully integrated
companies, The illustration below compares this group to the overall population in a few key areas. Additionally, we look at a subgroup of fully integrated companies with 500 or more employees, to see how they compare to the overall population. Fully integrated company respondents were also much less likely to report their method of social engagement as being ad- hoc. They are also more likely to have their own communities (especially 500+ employee fully integrated companies), and provide mobile support for their customers. While it would seem that becoming a fully integrated company would entail operating in a more complex environment, at least while transitioning to this kind operation, fully integrated organizations were less likely to cite resource allocation as a major challenge. Management buy- in, however, is a slightly greater challenge for fully integrated companies with 500 or more employees. What immediately stands out in the figure above is how much more likely fully integrated companies are to experience very positive impact of their social initiatives on their service goals and objectives Fully integrated companies with over 500 employees are most likely to benefit, being almost twice as likely to report very positive impact, compared with the general population. In general, it appears there are significant benefits to combining social tools and tactics at the process, team and corporate strategy level, and for larger organizations the impact seems to be even more potent, but it will be interesting to see how this trends in 2014. Depending on Branded Community Last year we looked at how branded communities fit into the mix of customer engagement from a service perspective. Respondents who reported working at an organization with a company- owned
community found them to be the most effective channel, even though Facebook and Twitter were by far the most used networks for customer engagement. The image below illustrates the continuing importance of these communities to companies who own them. A Look at the Allocation of Investment A quick look at the annual financial investment that companies allocate to implementing social tools and strategies into customer service efforts reveals some slight upward movement from 2011 to 2013. Facebook and Twitter are definitely the most effective channels for engagement for the general population, by far out- distancing owned communities, but but those with an owned community have a different perspective.. While Facebook nudges out owned communities among this group, those communities are, for all intents and purposes, just as important to them as the big guys. In the 2013 survey, for the first time, we asked respondents to tell us how the monies invested in social service initiatives were allocated. The overall population reported allocating the money in the following manner: Technology: 23% Employee Time: 51% Training: 11% Consulting: 10% Other: 5%
A closer look at how funds were allocated uncovers a few interesting patterns. handling greater than 25% of service interactions via social reported spending 14% on consulting time, well above the general population average of 10%. Technology spending also makes up a greater percentage of the overall spend for companies investing more than $250,000 (29% vs. 23%). Social Monitoring Tools Interesting Shift Year- Over- Year In 2012 we started asking respondents for the tools used at their organizations to help implement their social service strategies. A word cloud of the services used in 2012 is pictured below: Across the board, employee time is far and away the category receiving the most financial resources, with technology next in line. While technology made up 23% of the overall population s annual investment, that number grows significantly to 32% for larger enterprises deploying native mobile apps for customer service. Technology spending also reaches 32% for larger enterprises with the ability to respond to service inquiries in less than an hour. When looking at companies reporting very positive impact from their organizations social service efforts, technology spending makes up 27%, while 47% is allocated to employee time. Companies Just one year later in 2013 the word cloud looks like this:
As you can see, many of the tools mentioned in 2012 are missing from the 2013 word cloud, with the missing tools, all of which are paid services, indicated in red. Other tools like Radian6 and Lithium have been de- emphasized, whereas services like HootSuite and Facebook have become more popular. Below is the actual count of the top tools mentioned in 2012 vs. 2013: This graphic really illustrates how tools like HootSuite and Facebook made tremendous gains in terms of usage, while Radian6, Attensity and Visible Technologies lost some steam among survey respondents. Meanwhile, other paid services like Sysomos, HubSpot, Meltwater and Sprinklr made gains among respondents. It will be interesting to see what this list will look like in 2014. Will it be more turnover, or will the likes of HootSuite, Sysomos and others continue picking up users?
5000+ Employee Organizations This year for the first time we segmented out respondents from organizations with greater than 5000 employees, and with representatives from these super- sized organizations making up 11% of the total survey population, we re able to make some interesting comparisons. The illustration below depicts how these extremely large companies compare to the general population of respondents with respect to key survey metrics. As you can see, super- sized companies are aligned with the general population with respect to impact, satisfaction levels, and the belief that Facebook is the most effective social channel for customer engagement. As might be expected, they are much more likely to invest big dollars into their program. But the total survey population is much quicker to respond to social inquiries, handle a higher percentage of service interactions on social channels, and work in more integrated teams than do the big companies. About the Index By the Numbers This study was led Brent Leary, Partner, CRM Essentials LLC. Reach out to Brent via Twitter at @BrentLeary. To provide some background information to the make up this year s Index, here are some key demographics to the survey population: Total Respondents: 1258 (920 completed) o Up from 891 (587) completed in 2012 69% of Respondents are based in the USA 48% employed at companies with 50 or less employees 26% employed at companies with over 500 employees 11% employed at companies with over 5000 employees 30% are Director level or above (C- Level, VP) Top Departments o Marketing 57% o Other 20% o PR 8% o Customer Care 8% o Sales 7%