Firm predicts customer service will become more social over next two years
MediaPost Publications reports that in the next two years, 30% of large companies will extend their online community activities to include improving customer service, compared to only about 5% in 2010, according to data from Gartner Inc.
The article reports, “We expect the high-profile nature of social networks and social CRM for customer service to rapidly advance adoption from early adopter to mainstream deployments despite the volatile and rapid evolution of social networks in general,” said Drew Kraus, research vice president at Gartner.
But the firm also identified several hurdles slowing the shift to customer care through social sites. Despite the hype surrounding social media as a customer service tool, there is a lack of back-end technology in place to support customer service operations through online social channels. “There are a myriad of technology and process issues that arise when you go from ad hoc support to scalable and structured support,” he said.
And because social CRM is still at an early stage, the policies and procedures for handling consumer interactions this way are lagging.
