contact center social care metrics whitepaper march2012
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Apa yang disebut contact center social careTRANSCRIPT
© 2012 TELUS International
Measuring Social Customer Service in the Contact Center
Contact Center Metrics & ROI for Social Care
White Paper
Part of the Best Practices for Social Media Customer Service series by global
contact center provider, TELUS International. Contributors:
Social Customer Care Metrics & ROI White Paper
© 2012 TELUS International 2
Contents
Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 3
The Push to Serve Through Social Channels ................................................................................................. 4
Handling the Magnitude of Support Conversations ..................................................................................... 4
Channel Redirection Makes it Interesting ................................................................................................ 5
Metrics for Running an Effective Social Care Program ................................................................................. 5
1. Service Measures ................................................................................................................................. 6
2. Quality Measures ................................................................................................................................. 8
3. Effectiveness Measures ........................................................................................................................ 9
Calculating ROI ............................................................................................................................................ 11
Calculating Total Cost .............................................................................................................................. 11
Organizational Design Impacts Visibility into Labor Cost ................................................................... 12
Technology Solves the Issue of Hidden Costs ..................................................................................... 13
Calculating the Gain from Investment .................................................................................................... 13
Cost Reduction Activities ........................................................................................................................ 14
Revenue Generation ............................................................................................................................... 14
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 16
Key Takeaways ........................................................................................................................................ 16
About the Authors ...................................................................................................................................... 17
Oracle Corporation ................................................................................................................................. 17
Kenna Inc. ................................................................................................................................................ 17
TELUS International................................................................................................................................. 17
Social Customer Care Metrics & ROI White Paper
© 2012 TELUS International 3
Executive Summary Social customer service is rapidly becoming the new, critical channel to drive satisfaction and loyalty.
Organizations are at different stages of maturity of their social care programs. Some are only listening
to customers via social media using “voice of the customer” information to improve marketing,
products and support. Others are regularly engaging with customers and realizing positive outcomes
including reduced contacts into other support channels. Almost all organizations, however, struggle
with measuring the impact of social customer service on important business metrics.
The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive list of metrics that measure the success of social
media support programs. From this list, you can build a performance management framework tailored
to your company’s desired outcomes. The key performance indicators (KPIs) defined in this paper are
adapted from traditional contact center metrics and fall into three categories:
1. Service measures 2. Quality measures 3. Effectiveness measures
We also tackle the difficult question faced by all service professionals—what is the ROI of social care?
We outline the essential components for measuring ROI, including revenue generation, cost avoidance
and total program costs—once again providing a fundamental framework. Your organization can use
the guidance presented in this paper to create customized metrics for your unique situation.
TELUS International, in partnership with Kenna Inc. and Oracle Corporation, has undertaken this study as
part of its ongoing efforts to be at the forefront of the evolving customer service landscape. As a global
contact center provider, TELUS International recognizes that service organizations are metrics-driven. As
social care moves into the realm of the contact center, TELUS International will continue to invest in
understanding social care best practices to better serve clients.
To summarize, our goal is to provide you with:
1. Well-defined performance metrics for efficiently running a social customer service program
2. The means to calculate ROI
Related research: Benchmarking Social Media Customer Service | best practices for social care This study, in partnership with best-selling social media author Dave Evans, examines the social care best practices of leading high-tech companies. It shows how social care has the potential to lead overall brand perception in addition to customer satisfaction.
Benchmarking Online Chat in the Contact Center | best practices for chat service & sales Sixty in-depth web chat sessions were conducted and a further 150 chat transcripts were reviewed from six Fortune 500 companies to analyze the qualitative metrics of an ideal online chat sales session. The results were scored against three major criteria: agent skills, communications style and chat system features.
Social Customer Care Metrics & ROI White Paper
© 2012 TELUS International 4
Social media is opening a
back door into customer
service, forcing companies to
formalize their approach to
social care.
The Push to Serve Through Social Channels Most customer service organizations feel immense pressure to develop effective social care programs
due to the hype and expected growth of social customer service. However, according to Gartner,
enterprises are just starting to adopt and deploy social care programs:
"In 2010, only 5 percent of organizations took advantage of social/collaborative
customer action to improve service processes; however, customer demand and
heightened business awareness is making this a top issue among customer service
managers," Mr. Kraus said. "At current trajectories, within five years we expect that
community peer-to-peer support projects will supplement or replace Tier 1 contact
center support in more than 40 percent of top 1,000 companies with a contact center."1
Most social media activities still reside in corporate marketing departments
as a means to build brand awareness through Facebook, YouTube or
Twitter. Customer service organizations are being pushed into social care
by savvy customers who are already asking questions on social networks
and expecting responses. These customers are getting faster responses to
their issues through social channels than the traditional contact center
because companies don’t want to appear unresponsive in public forums.
Handling the Magnitude of Support Conversations Once committed to social care, organizations often struggle with handling volume. Dell is a good
example of a company that adopted social media early with continued investment in well-designed
social sites for marketing, product ideation and customer service. Dell has built the infrastructure that
manages 25,000 social conversations per day.2
The magnitude of conversations can seem overwhelming, but in reality, not all social conversations
require a response. Companies depend on robust listening platforms to filter and prioritize relevant
social conversations from inappropriate or extraneous chatter. Technology platforms are evolving with
the ability to automatically score posts based on relevance, urgency and influence. As a result,
conversations requiring immediate attention are prioritized, and no time is wasted manually sifting
through hundreds of posts to find hot issues.
1 Pettey, Christy. “Gartner Says the Use of Social CRM for Customer Service Will Grow Rapidly Over the Next Two Years.” Gartner. 3/3/11. http://bit.ly/e1wHhk. Accessed 12/19/11. 2 Shaughnessy, Haydn. “Dell Social Business Strategy - The Secret Sauce.” Forbes. 12/01/2011. http://onforb.es/s4mj9l. Accessed 1/13/12.
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Channel Redirection Makes it Interesting
Ideally, customer questions are addressed in the social channel of
origin. A dilemma arises when customer issues are too complex or
sensitive to solve in the channel of original contact. In these
situations, agents should request to move the conversation to a
more secure or private channel, such as chat or voice. We call this
“channel redirection” and it does have its benefits: customers get
quicker resolution to their complex problems, while companies
route customers to agents with the right skills. It’s still a win for
both sides.
However, channel redirection presents a whole new set of issues
with collecting metrics. How do you accurately measure
performance when conversations are bouncing around a multi-
channel support environment? Additionally, if companies allow
agents to up-sell and cross-sell, then how do you track revenue
associated with social care? How do you measure customer
satisfaction when agents from different channels are involved?
Fortunately, technology plays a key role in solving these issues. Many popular social care solutions are
available to extract, analyze and present performance data—but it’s still early. Our next white paper will
compare the features and benefits of these solutions.
Metrics for Running an Effective Social Care Program The purpose of an effective metrics framework is to ensure that the social care program is achieving its
business goals and objectives. Metrics should also ensure personnel are achieving their potential and
that operations are efficient. Traditional social media metrics, such as “likes” and “followers,” are good
for measuring top-of-the-funnel activities but will not necessarily correlate to a successful social care
program grounded in business goals.
Since social care is a new contact channel in a multi-channel service strategy, the key performance
indicators should complement established contact center metrics. In this section, we divide social care
metrics into three categories that intuitively integrate with a service dashboard:
1. Service measures
2. Quality measures
3. Effectiveness measures
We provide an extensive list of metrics, but in day-to-day operations, most organizations would not
want, or be able to track all of them. Part of the challenge in launching a social care program is
As companies expand customer
service channels to include social
care, they are finding that metrics
are difficult to track as
conversations bounce between
channels.
A robust technology solution is
critical to managing, measuring
and reporting in a multi-channel
environment.
TELUS International’s next white
paper will compare the features
and benefits of popular social care
solutions to help companies make
tradeoffs in their technology
decisions.
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Companies should define
their interval of time for
measuring service metrics.
It’s common to use one day
as the interval for social care,
with the goal of moving to
hourly and then half-hour
intervals.
determining which metrics are important to measure success. With the guidance presented here,
making those decisions becomes easier.
1. Service Measures
Companies measure service performance in many different ways. Some metrics are associated with
demand, such as listening volume. Others are related to the speed of response, such as service level.
Table 1 shows a summary of KPIs we recommend for social care.
Table 1: Service Measures
Social Team KPI Description Calculation
Service Level The percentage of incoming posts that an agent answers in a pre-defined amount of time
SL = (Σ posts responded to within threshold time)/( Σ posts answered) * 100
Average Handle Time Average amount of time agents work on social media responses during a pre-defined interval of time
AHT = Σ (time a post is assigned to agent – time to respond) / Σ posts handled during an interval
Abandon Rate Percentage of posts never responded to or looked at by social team during a pre-defined interval of time
AR = (Σ posts not responded to / RV)* 100
Listening Volume Total number of social posts that meet the requirements of the listening platform for a pre-defined interval of time
LV= Σ of posts that meet the include and exclude criteria of the listening system for an interval of time
Relevant Volume
Total number of relevant social posts that should be responded to by a company for a pre-defined interval of time
RV = LV – Σ posts marked as not relevant by agents for an interval of time
Direct Volume Total number of social posts submitted directly on a company’s social properties for a pre-defined interval of time
DV = Σ of posts on company-branded social networks
Outgoing Volume Total number of responses posted by company representatives for a pre-defined interval of time
OV = Σ of responses by agents for an interval of time
Proactive Volume Total number of unsolicited messages sent to social customers from company representatives. This measures outreach activities for a pre-defined interval of time.
PV = Σ of proactive messages sent by agents for an interval of time
Service Level (SL), Average Handle Time (AHT) and Abandon Rate (AR)
measure the efficiency of the social care channel. As a fundamental metric of
all contact centers, SL measures the percentage of posts answered by agents
in a defined threshold of time. An industry best practice is to measure SL
every half-hour and report it as a weighted average over the day. Given the
difficulty of measuring SL for social care, many programs measure it on a
daily basis.
AHT measures the amount of time it takes an agent to respond to a post
from the time it is assigned to when the response is published.
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AR is the percentage of relevant social media posts that are not answered in a given time period. This
happens when the Relevant Volume is too high for the agents to handle, such as when there’s a spike in
social activity due to product issues or macro-events. If a customer’s post goes unanswered for a set
period of time, it may be deemed “stale” and left without a response. This reinforces the importance of
prioritizing customer messages to address urgent issues first.
Listening Volume (LV), Relevant Volume (RV) and Direct Volume (DV) are different measures of
demand. LV measures the number of relevant posts found by the listening platform based on the
“include” and “exclude” criteria. Many of these posts will be further filtered as non-relevant by agents.
RV is LV less those posts marked by agents as not needing a response. This can occur when a customer
issue is already solved by another person or the post met the listening platform criteria but didn’t really
pose a question. DV is the total number of customer posts that are submitted directly on a company’s
social properties. DV shows the demand for company-branded social support services. It’s also helpful
for staffing and identifying trends.
Outgoing Volume (OV) and Proactive Volume (PV) are measures of agent engagement. OV is the total
number of messages published by agents in a particular period of time, while PV measures the number
of unsolicited messages published in a period of time. PV usually includes “tips and tricks” and other
helpful how-to information that builds relationships and drives customer loyalty.
There are many other traditional contact center metrics that measure agent and overall contact center
productivity. One example is Agent Occupancy, which is the percentage of logged-in time used for
researching customer issues and responding to social posts compared with available time. Even though
we only listed metrics specific to social care in Table 1, supervisors should continue to use these
operational metrics to manage queues efficiently. Additionally, if social care is outsourced to a contact
center provider, the business process outsourcer (BPO) will most likely track and report on additional
KPIs, including schedule adherence, scheduled efficiency and staff shrinkage for the contact center as a
whole as well as for the social care queues.
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2. Quality Measures
Quality metrics are highly valuable but usually difficult to measure. They often require a survey or a
manager’s judgment. Calculating this critical information requires both quantitative and qualitative
approaches. Table 2 lists the most important quality measures for social care.
Table 2: Quality Measures
Social Team KPI Description Calculation
First Post Resolution Percentage of posts resolved in social media channel on first response
FPR = Calculated via a customer survey
Quality of Response Measure of the quality of an agent’s written communication
QoR = Calculated via quality assurance and customer survey
Redirect Rate Percentage of responses that redirect customers to a private conversation, such as chat or voice
RDR = Should be calculated automatically via social care technology platform metrics; if not, then calculated by comparing the incoming channel vs. outgoing channel for all posts during an interval
Transfer Rate Percentage of responses that are transferred to another department
TR = Should be calculated automatically via social care technology platform metrics; if not, then calculated by measuring the incoming department where a post is assigned vs. outgoing department where a post is answered
Some of these metrics measure the rate of customer resolution, while others measure the quality of
agent response. These KPIs tell management how well social interactions are handled as a whole. Just
like in the chat channel, social care depends on clear, on-point written communication. Agents must be
competent to write concise answers on a broad range of customer issues.
First Post Resolution (FPR) is adapted from first call resolution (FCR), and is the leading indicator of
customer satisfaction. It measures whether customer issues are resolved on first contact. For social care
channels, this metric may be lower in different social networks. For example, it’s very difficult to solve
complex problems over microblogs, like Twitter, due to the character limit. This is why agents often
redirect Twitter customers to Twitter’s Direct Message (DM) function. That way, agents and customers
can have longer conversations that emulate the chat channel. Facebook doesn’t have the same
character limitation as Twitter, but it wouldn’t be efficient for an agent to post a lengthy, detailed
and/or complex response. Facebook has its own set of norms that make brief, on-point communication
essential as well.
Quality of Response (QoR) is similar to quality assurance scores in the contact center. Agents are often
evaluated on qualitative measures, including general writing style and communications skills, product
and service knowledge, completeness of customer resolution, and adherence to defined procedures and
policies. Quality management is as important to social care as it is to other contact channels.
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Channel Redirect Rate (RDR) measures the number of times social care agents publically invite
customers to communicate on a private, and in some ways premium, channel such as chat or voice.
Often, better customer service can be delivered during one-to-one interactions, and redirection shows
the social community that companies are listening and willing to help.
Transfer Rate (TR) is the number of customer issues that are transferred to departments outside of
customer service for resolution. Examples include transferring a customer to the sales department for a
new purchase or transferring a social post to a subject matter expert in the product group. Historically,
high transfer rates indicated problems, particularly in the voice channel. This was usually due to
incorrect routing or poor IVR design. TR percentages should be monitored for social channels to
optimize operations. A high TR may be acceptable if a company wants to empower a large portion of its
workforce to get social conversations to the right employees.
3. Effectiveness Measures
When it comes to our final category, tracking social care effectiveness metrics is important for several
reasons:
Understanding economic impact. With social media’s prevalence, it is extremely important to
track its economic impact on your brand. Metrics such as reach, loyalty and conversion rate help
measure how much more revenue is gained through social care interactions and how much
brand equity is built through positive interactions.
Filtering and prioritizing posts for agents. With a limited number of contact center resources it
becomes increasingly important to determine which posts require a response. Effectiveness
metrics such as influence, brand evangelist index and recency can help prioritize posts. For
instance, a new post from a recognized brand evangelist with ten thousand followers should
receive priority over an older post from someone with only a few followers.
Routing the right post to the right agent. In most contact centers, agents are assigned to
queues by skill sets. One group may specialize in complaints and another group may specialize in
converting sales. Sentiment analysis, or keyword filtering, helps determine which posts needs to
be routed to which group.
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Table 3: Effectiveness Measures
Social Team KPI Description Calculation
Reach
Aggregate number of people who can possibly read agent responses for a pre-defined interval of time. Adding up the potential audience does not mean that the entire audience will see every message, but it can serve as a proxy for the number of direct impressions that can be made.
Reach is quantified by summing the number of people who are subscribed, following, friended, etc. on the social channels where agents are posting messages.
Potential Influence Aggregate number of people who are connected to the Reach audience, or the sum of the second-level of impressions that could be made if messages are re-published to these audiences. This does not mean that a message will reach the second-level audience but is again used as a way to measure potential impressions.
Potential Influence can be calculated by summing the different influence metrics from each of the social networks. For example, Twitter publishes how many followers a Tweeter has and how often they tweet. Facebook publishes how many friends a given member has. Polling the application programming interfaces (APIs) of the different social networks and summing the connections an audience has provides a measure of potential influence.
Amplification How likely an individual is to retweet or repost. Quantitative score from Twitter and similar services on social networks.
Conversion Rate: Customer Satisfaction
The rate that a dissatisfied customer is converted to a satisfied customer through a social care interaction.
Calculations can be made based on customer satisfaction surveys or tracking posts going from negative to positive sentiment.
Conversion Rate: Revenue Generation
The rate at which a sale is made because of a social care interaction.
Calculations can be made based on checkout analysis.
Brand Evangelist Index (BEI)
Indicator of how likely a customer is to evangelize your brand on social networks.
Historically BEI has been calculated by correlating and summing customer satisfaction surveys. The most satisfied customers are more likely to be brand evangelists. Sentiment analysis is a more efficient way to see who is most positive about your brand.
Loyalty A customer who continually purchases from a company when alternative, comparable products are available from competitors. Loyal customers are often brand advocates and price insensitive.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Likelihood to Recommend (L2R) are accepted measures of loyalty that can be calculated through a survey.
Sentiment The attitude, opinion, emotional state, or intended emotional communication of a social post, which can be used to route the post to the appropriate agent/department for resolution.
Statistical models can be used to calculate a poster’s sentiment. Traditionally sentiment analysis accuracy is low (less than 70%) but by having the agent properly classify the sentiment & feeding that classification back into the statistical model, accuracy will continually improve.
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Calculating ROI Before investing in social care, businesses should ask a vital question—what's the ROI of providing social
customer service? Companies must avoid the trap of rushing into social media because it’s the “next big
thing.” Properly calculating ROI influences strategic investment decisions and establishes a baseline for
program expectations.
We’ll use the traditional return on investment formula, but carefully decompose the Gain from
Investment and Total Cost:
Our goal is to help readers compare the performance of investing in social care relative to other
investments in serving customers. ROI is typically expressed as a percentage and is based on returns
over an associated time period, usually one year.
It’s important to note that we’re providing a framework that needs to be adapted for your enterprise.
For example, the impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty is not included in our gains formula, but if
your company can equate revenue to increases in customer satisfaction then it should be included in the
ROI calculation. Also, ask yourself if customers expect your company to respond on social networks. Are
competitors providing social care? Are employees asking to engage on social networks because they are
passionate about social media? These are all important factors.
Calculating Total Cost
The first step in calculating program ROI is to sum up the total cost (TC) of a social care program. Usually
ROI is calculated for a year, and TC often changes year over year, so calculating years one through three
is a common practice. The main components of social care costs are:
1. Labor, including both variable and fixed (customer service representatives, supervisors, business
analysts and subject matter experts)
2. Technology, such as a listening platform and agent-productivity interface (annualize if Software
as a Service-based)
3. Facilities and maintenance
4. Human resources for hiring and training
5. Miscellaneous overhead for consultants, travel and chargebacks from other departments
Labor is usually the single biggest expense in any customer service program. Contact centers carefully
monitor staffing ratios, utilization and other aspects of operations to manage labor costs. As companies
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implement social care, four organizational models are emerging that allow different levels of control and
governance. Each has proven to be successful. However, the cost structures for labor vary depending on
the organizational design. It’s also important to note that TC may be more difficult to calculate if a
company has a large social media-trained staff spread throughout the organization. In this case, a
common technology platform is required to track costs effectively. Let’s take a closer look at labor costs.
Organizational Design Impacts Visibility into Labor Cost
Four organizational designs are being adopted by leading companies based on culture, operations and
desired outcomes for social care. They are:
1. Social Care Centralized within the Contact Center
Under this model the contact center manages all aspects of the social care program as just
another customer contact channel, similar to live help (chat) or email. Either dedicated or
blended (responsible for more than one contact channel) agents monitor and respond to
customer issues on social networks. As volume increases, agents are added to support queues.
There’s a direct correlation between volume and costs.
2. Social Care Decentralized outside of the Contact Center
Another approach is to allow a large portion or all employees to interact on the company’s
behalf on social networks. In this scenario there’s often a certification program and a policy on
acceptable communications. Knowledgeable employees who are passionate about social media
support customers as part of their everyday jobs. Several companies, such as Best Buy and
Zappos, have successfully implemented this strategy. In this scenario, a small central team
coordinates the efforts of socially certified employees. A governance team is often responsible
for outlining clear social policies and procedures to manage risk to the business and brand. They
may also be responsible for providing tools to enable content creation.
Social care centralized within the contact
center
Social care decentralized outside of the contact
center
Combination of centralized & decentralized
social care
Social care provided by a business process outsourcer (BPO)
Org design affects social
care
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The cost for this approach is the sum of the costs for the governance team, training costs and
any enabling technology. It gets murky when assigning a cost to the active social care activities
that employees are providing. In other words, companies struggle with determining how much
time employees are devoting to social care and the impact that has on their other
responsibilities.
3. Combination of Centralized and Decentralized Social Care
Another approach is to blend centralization and decentralization. In this case, companies have
dedicated teams responsible for providing social care as a primary job function. They also have
subject matter experts who provide social support because they have demonstrated an interest
in social media. Subject matter experts are usually certified and become a valuable resource to
social care agents. In this scenario, the total cost is the sum of labor costs spread across the silos
of customer service, product groups and marketing. Identifying the fully loaded costs can be
difficult without the right technology.
4. Social Care Provided by a Business Process Outsourcer (BPO)
Another scenario is where a BPO provides social care, often in addition to voice, email and chat
support. The BPO simply adds social care as another offering in a multi-channel approach. In this
case, the cost is calculated and contracts are written based on forecasted volumes and cost per
hour (or similar fee structure). In either case, the costs are well-contained within the BPO and
should be relatively easy to track.
Technology Solves the Issue of Hidden Costs
One trend is for companies to have all social care representatives use a common Software as a Service
(SaaS) interface to interact on social networks. These tools support the centralized, decentralized and
hybrid approach, but have the added benefit of being able to provide metrics on all social transactions.
Users login to a platform to handle social interactions from a single interface, which automatically
centralizes information and tracks performance. Essentially, a robust platform solves the problem of
hidden costs when social care representatives are spread throughout an enterprise. This becomes
increasingly important as companies want visibility into performance and financial gains.
Calculating the Gain from Investment
The benefits of a well-run social care program can be extensive, from increases in market share to
operational savings. One of the biggest advantages is that issue resolution changes from a one-to-one
model to a one-to-many model, meaning many people benefit from one informative, well-written
response. As more people rely on the Internet for solutions instead of calling customer service, this
benefit becomes even more significant. Over time, service organizations are likely to see many financial
and operational gains from investing in social care.
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For this discussion, we will examine the two most tangible gains: cost reduction and revenue generation.
Cost Reduction Activities
Cost reduction comes in two categories: “hard” cost savings that directly impact the bottom line and
“soft” cost avoidance which is less tangible but equally real and should be properly quantified. Examples
of cost reduction activities are:
Deflecting calls to the contact center as
customers resolve their issues through
social support channels with social
representatives. To calculate, look for
year-over-year declines in the volume of
other channels. It’s important to survey
customers who resolved their issue on
social channels to determine how many
would have contacted the service
department via voice, chat or email if
their issue wasn’t resolved in social
channels.
Preventing future contacts by other customers experiencing similar issues. Since social
communication is public and often permanent, it’s easily searchable by customers who can solve
their own problems without interacting with the service department. Determining the cost
savings of this indirect benefit is much harder to calculate than a direct transaction but can be
estimated by looking at the reduction in utilization of other customer service channels.
Preventing returns through topical and immediate help.
Revenue Generation
Examples of revenue generation activities are:
Converting sales through direct transactions with sales agents. This type of interaction occurs
when an agent directly intervenes while a customer is asking questions on a social venue about
buying a product. Subsequent revenue generation can be measured by matching the agent
interaction with the customer’s purchase.
Converting sales through indirect transactions with a sales agent. These types of transactions
happen as a result of the social community having visibility into direct sales transactions. When
an agent helps one customer to convert a sale many other potential customers see that
transaction and a percentage of those will act on that information. These transactions are more
difficult to capture but can be measured with the help of post-sales surveys.
Sample question from @TELUSsupport post-resolution Twitter survey
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Brand Evangelist Index (BEI): When asked, 93% of TELUS Twitter clients say they are likely or very likely to share their experience.
Improving brand equity through proactive
customer service shows customers that a
company is willing to invest in their satisfaction.
When a company is proactive in responding to
complaints and negative comments, customers
notice and brand equity increases. People are
more likely to buy from a brand they trust. This
type of gain is difficult to quantify but can be
measured through overall increases in sales and
improved customer satisfaction.
Since summing the costs and revenue is difficult, it’s important to use all the resources available in the
customer service department to determine what’s truly contributing to the bottom line. Be sure to
carefully review disposition codes for voice and live help chat channels. Are they capturing information
relevant to social care? Examine the design, distribution and analysis of all the various CSAT surveys.
Find time to study social conversations between agents and customers. Are agents using the right
communications style? Are they upholding the corporate voice and tone?
Be sure to review Quality Assurance output to not only coach agents on the right behaviors, but to
identify systemic issues that can be improved through business process re-engineering. Also, consider
conducting one-off quantitative research to determine if social care is reducing the amount of customer
effort required to deal with your company. It’s a lot of work to synthesize all this data, but the output
validates ROI calculations.
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Conclusion We’ve adapted familiar contact center measures such as average handle time and transfer rate and
applied them to this new channel. At the same time, many new metrics are unique to measuring the
performance of social media activities, such as reach and sentiment. Calculating these metrics has been
largely manual, but technology is rapidly evolving that will automate processes. In the end, a strong
performance management system and the ability to calculate ROI are essential for business investment
and strategic decision-making.
Key Takeaways
1. While it’s still early for social care, customers are asking support questions on social networks.
Social media has opened a “back door” into customer service, forcing companies to formalize
their approach to social care.
2. Traditional contact center metrics can apply to social media customer service. Determine which
ones are worth tackling in your social care program. Use the guidance presented in this paper
for each key metric category: service measures, quality measures and effectiveness measures.
3. Speaking to executives and getting their buy-in requires discussions based on ROI. Decompose
what it means to calculate ROI for your organization by looking at revenue generation, cost
avoidance and total program costs. Invest in building an ROI framework that can evolve and
improve over time as data becomes available.
4. Fortunately, technology is rapidly evolving to automate many of the calculations presented in
this paper. Keeping a pulse on the vendor landscape for tools and platforms that can scale and
measure social care in the contact center can lead to a significant advantage.
TELUS International is dedicated to exploring these important customer service topics and will be
releasing a follow-up white paper analyzing the features and benefits of leading SaaS-based social care
platforms. Request more information at: [email protected]
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About the Authors TELUS International engaged contact center experts Jim Rainville and Kim Keating to develop contact
center metrics for social care programs.
Oracle Corporation
Jim is a Principal Sales Engineer at Oracle working on the LiveHelp product line. He has been a driving
force in developing a proof of concept product that merges social network listening with traditional
contact center channels such as Click to Call and Click to Chat. Oracle engineers hardware and software
to integrate in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL),
visit http://www.oracle.com/webcommerce or contact Jim Rainville at [email protected].
Kenna Inc.
Kim is the CEO of Kenna Inc. and was the lead consultant on TELUS International’s 2011 study
Benchmarking Social Media Customer Service, along with Dave Evans, best-selling social media author.
Kenna has collaborated with TELUS International on several thought leadership pieces focused on using
chat and social media effectively for customer service. Kenna is dedicated to helping service
organizations achieve excellence through competitively advantaged, multi-channel contact strategies.
For more information, visit kennainc.com or contact Kim Keating at [email protected].
TELUS International
TELUS International is the global arm of TELUS, a leading national telecommunications company in
Canada with over 12 million customer connections. TELUS International delivers contact center and
business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions to some of the world’s largest and most respected brands
in the financial services, telecommunications, consumer electronics and utilities industries. Its multi-
channel programs include voice, email, chat and social media customer care. Connect with us to learn
more about our contact center outsourcing solutions: [email protected]
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