While most contact centers now offer multi-channel customer communications including phone, email, web chat, IVR and mail/fax, the explosive growth of social media has made this channel critical for enterprise-wide success. Moreover, the social media channel must be fully integrated into contact center and workforce optimization solutions.

Workforce Optimization and Social Media

Workforce optimization (WFO) typically encompasses communications recording, quality monitoring, speech analytics, eCoaching and workforce management. Speech analytics helps high-volume contact centers cope with an otherwise unmanageable number of conversations. eCoaching provides customized instruction for an agent‘s changing weak points in a continual loop of learning. Workforce management ensures the right agent is assigned to the right job at the right time.

But workforce optimization solutions must be closely integrated with social media channels. These channels can improve agent performance by opening up new sources of information and real-time assistance. But some WFO features must be adapted. For example, workforce management becomes more complex because you need to determine whether the agent has been well-trained in using the social media channel.

Other features, such as speech analytics, are facilitated because social media already provides the customer interaction in a written format. On the other hand, customer dissatisfaction becomes more critical because social media provides a bidirectional public channel with the possibility of amplifying complaints in a viral manner. So agents must be trained in transferring an ongoing dispute from a public social media channel to a more private one.

Social Media Implementation

Integration of social media channels provides unique challenges for contact center management. All channels should be seamlessly handled by the agents without requiring them to switch among different systems.

Of course, any workforce optimization solution designed for oral communications must be transformed to handle requests to contact centers via social media. And social media contact options must be integrated with other WFO functions such as quality monitoring. With few standards in place for social media channels, any mistakes in social media communications can rapidly become problematic as the customer can spread highly negative publicity in a public arena.

Still, social media communications can attract a younger demographic, the customers of tomorrow. When dealing with social media, the following quote is instructive, "You can't expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday's tools and expect to be in business tomorrow (Raina Chapman)."

Conclusion

Modern business intelligence tools must be used to filter today‘s data overload for several key reasons. In addition to providing agents with appropriate training and making communications transparent, they generate critical information and reveal market trends, enabling immediate management action with real-time business intelligence. These immediate management actions help your organization stay one step ahead of the competition, increasing corporate revenues and creating sustained loyal customers. Contact center solutions with social media channels go a long way in driving these results.