Customer support has always been a challenging task for companies, especially when customer volumes and product SKUs increase. As social media becomes increasingly pervasive, how can companies make their support systems more responsive?

Firms including Cisco and Zendesk have developed systems that integrate customer communications functions with social media such as Twitter. Zendesk has a support ticketing system that can turn Twitter posts into support tickets. This integration makes it relatively easy to respond to Twitter posts from customers complaining about a service, while also registering the whole incident in the support system.

Such developments are becoming increasingly relevant as customers choose social media channels to complain about bad experiences with companies. Support desks can no longer expect customers to come directly and privately to them any more, but must monitor Twitter and other social media for information about bad customer experiences.

The new generation of customer support systems feature innovations such as collaborative authoring, in which multiple parties can contribute to a help ticket, which then becomes a searchable part of a database. Support feedback mechanisms are becoming multichannel, and socially enabled, which allows content to be personalized more effectively.

Rather than simply being a means of solving an irritating problem, then, support is becoming a more integrated part of the customer experience. Customers should be able to leave support interactions more satisfied as a result, and this is a key deliverable. Support incidents are pivotal points in the customer relationship, in which individuals can come away from a company feeling looked after, and valued, by their supplier. These incidents are an opportunity to not only recover relationships, but also to enhance them, and perhaps even increase revenues by cross-selling.

This blog first appeared on Orange Business Live we contribute to regularly.

Finding controversy in social media is like shooting fish in a barrel. This month’s firestorm concerns Malcolm Gladwell’s article on using social media for activism. The renowned pop science author argued in the New Yorker that social media was an inappropriate tool for activism and that ‘the revolution will not be tweeted’.

This provoked heated responses from social media luminaries, including Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, who argued that “Anyone who’s claiming that sending a tweet by itself is activism, that’s ludicrous — but no one’s claiming that, at least no one that’s credible. If you can’t organise you can’t activate.”

Perhaps. But that doesn’t undermine Gladwell’s core argument – that the messy, loosely-coupled nature of social networks makes it difficult to drive through change. The problem, he said, was that painful social changes such as the racial civil rights movement in the US need top-down hierarchies to be effective. Conversely, social media networks are flat matrices of chatterers that say lots, and do little that could be considered cohesive. No one changed the world by typing ‘nom nom nom’ into a status bar.

Making use of an organised mess

Nevertheless, in certain situations, such as inside the enterprise, the messy, disorganised nature of social networks could be advantageous. A CEO may not want to use a social network to organise the workforce towards a common goal (such as increasing top line revenues by 2%). But they may want to leverage such networks to encourage bottom-up thinking.

Top-down hierarchies are good for organising people around a central idea (such as civil rights reform, for example). They de-emphasise the idea of thinking for yourself beyond preset parameters. This is how many things work, from seminal protest movements through to the military film sets and commercial kitchens are organised this way. A central taskmaster delegates to others, who may delegate further, creating a tightly-organised chain of command.

Conversely, social networks are particularly good at two things: social capital, and emergent behaviour. They give people the chance to promote themselves and their ideas. Thinking outside the box is encouraged.

In an enterprise setting, hierarchical structures work when disseminating a leader’s vision and getting employees on board, but it is difficult to use them for two-way communication. For an organisation wanting to squeeze tacit knowledge out of its employee base, or to give people the opportunity to put innovative ideas in play, social networks may be more appropriate.

An employee with a passion for, say, a new product line or a way to remove half the steps from a convoluted corporate process that they know intimately may find it difficult to make themselves heard in a hierarchical structure. But given the chance to develop and run with the idea in an online corporate social network, that employee may gather supporters who discuss and evolve the concept to the point where they represent a significant movement in the company.

This is how loosely coupled groups known as ‘communities of practice’ are developed. Think of them as groups gathering around a digital water cooler, discussing possibilities for aspects of their company that they are close to, and passionate about. Groups such as these can sow the seeds for new lines of revenue, and groundbreaking efficiency measures.

Perhaps social networks are not the ideal tool for top-down activism, but they can still be used to effect radical change. Such developments could be highly valuable for a management courageous enough to give employees this sort of voice – and the technology to make themselves heard. Let’s hope, then, that management is willing to listen.

Should CIOs blog? Should they tweet, or otherwise engage with social media? It is a question that IT executives should increasingly ask themselves, as they attempt to fight their corner within organisations that can be sceptical about IT as a function.

Blogging, once a pastime for celebrity followers, cookery buffs, and movie fans, has increasingly become a corporate activity as companies understand and embrace the appeal of social media. It can be used as a way to encourage conversations between executives and others in the industry, and with customers. It can be used as a platform to hammer home a particular message, or to promote a particular category of product. For CIOs, who in many cases are managing a transition for the IT function within their companies, it can be a useful way to make themselves heard. It is a pursuit followed by several high-profile CIOs, including Vivek Kundra, the CIO for the US Federal government.

For years now, IT departments have been considered a cost centre within organisations. IT executives constantly have had to battle boards that are unwilling to spend money on what they see as a cash drain on the organisation. However, in the last couple of years, some companies have begun maturing to the point where they see IT as a potential centre for revenue. The savvy CIO understands this transition, and the associated requirement for a more strategic conversation between the IT function and others in the business. If organisations can be persuaded to view IT strategically – as a business partner which can help to drive growth in new and interesting directions – then CIOs can manoeuvre themselves and their departments into a more advantageous position.

A blog is one way to help demonstrate thought leadership both within an organisation and further afield. It also helps to promote a CIO personally as a strategic thinker who can be relied upon for a visionary approach. Here are our top tips to help new CIO bloggers to make their mark:

Break new ground

There are plenty of blogs that say nothing. An online platform for discussion that simply spouts conventional wisdom is almost worse than no blog at all, because it casts the author in the role of follower, rather than leader. Find something new to say, and say it in an engaging and entertaining way.

Find a cause

One way to demonstrate a visionary approach and develop a distinct personal voice is by embracing a subject as yours, and using your blog as online platform to help win over others in the industry. Think about broad topics, such as accountability, service culture, or operational security – something that will identify you as a pioneer with a passion.

Market your blog

Develop reciprocal links. Twitter your blog, and use the blog to expand on some of your Tweets. Comment on other peoples’ blogs and add value to the conversation, rather than blatantly using others’ comment sections as a means of promoting your own outlet. It is also a good idea to promote your blog in areas that will attract like-minded people. User group web sites and discussion boards might be a good example. Measuring and monitoring is part of a good marketing strategy. Services such as PostRank Analytics provide analytics services that can help you to monitor the coverage that your blog posts are getting across various social media services.

Blog short, and blog often

Short, snappy posts of a few paragraphs are better than infrequent, longer posts. Busy readers like smart, informative content that they can digest easily, but they also like to keep coming back for more. Infrequent blogs make you seem inconsistent, and will discourage people from subscribing.

Check in with HR

You don’t need to rock the boat to make some interesting waves. Even bloggers that do not promote themselves as employees of their particular company can be subject to disciplinary action if they overstep the mark and say things that may bring their employer into disrepute. It is therefore imperative that bloggers capitalising on their executive position within a particular company should ensure that what they are saying does not cause any conflict with that company’s message. It would be wise to check in with human resources and with other board members to get the go-ahead to blog as an executive within your organisation

Make your blog last longer than your job

Your vision should outlast your tenure at any one company, and so should your blog. Use a personal URL wherever possible, so that you can take your online location and your blogging history with you where ever you end up. Phil Windley started blogging when he was the CIO for the State of Utah, for example, but has since maintained it while in multiple positions and roles in the tech industry.

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• Staying Under the Corporate Umbrella in the Midst of the Social Media Storm (socialmediatoday.com)

Here’s an extract of an article that Simon Marshall and myself wrote last week for Orange Business Services on their Orange Business Live blog…..

Social networking usage in the workplace has gone through the roof as Generation Y employees tap into social media such as Instant Messaging, Twitter, Facebook, SharePoint and WordPress to interact with colleagues, partners and customers. As enterprises explore the legitimate use of social networking tools to gain customer intimacy and improve relationships, there are a number of factors that can make deployment more effective

Corporate social networking usage has grown out of message boards, Lotus Notes and intranets and is embracing collaboration tools and the social Web to increase productivity and profitability.  More corporates are using social networking as a response to the rise in globalization and dispersed workforces, and as a way of opening access to business-critical skill sets and information. But, there are a number of reasons why corporates must focus on achieving specific, measurable objectives in a corporate-created social networking environment that encourages positive rather than negative results.

Firstly, there’s significant evidence that social networking sites blur the lines between business and personal relationships. Although this might cause inappropriate behavior as personal lives move into the workplace, it’s more likely to cause ethical dilemmas for staff and exposure of valuable corporate brands to the vagaries of individuals or user groups. Companies can therefore struggle to delineate what social networking use is appropriate for their staff without over-reaching and denying access altogether to common tools such as Web browsers. There is some evidence to suggest that Web-browsing decreases productivity, but most firms deem it fair to allow access to a variety of Web sites and social Web applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Plaxo during work hours.

Who owns social networking within the organization?

Secondly, firms can fail to effectively deal with this situation because no one corporate discipline fully ‘owns’ social networking. Sometimes the IT department has control, sometimes Human Resources oversees this function. In practice it’s best to place the technical management of the social networking domain with the IT department, but have Human Resources, Sales or Marketing report to the CIO or CEO on the business benefits of such tools. IT and the CIO must meet regularly to ensure that tools are not being misused and to maintain a common fair usage policy for all employees. Problems commonly arise where listed firms must communicate material statements to their shareholders first, but run the risk of overzealous employees doing their job for them and releasing information to the general market illegally.

Finally, firms can struggle to devise a system that measures ROI. This can stem from a lack of clear objectives for the use of social networking tools. Although interaction with customers and partners is relatively straightforward to rationalize, companies must define their own measurement system that places value on employee-to-employee interaction if they are to derive full productivity benefits. Understanding how social networking tools can be used to boost discrete corporate functions helps to define who uses which applications, and with what end result.

Common internal uses include live communication and interaction based on presence applications; staff training, mentoring and performance monitoring; project collaboration; information sharing; knowledge management; social mapping for succession planning and unified communications. External uses include public relations and marketing products, events, ideas and new services; corporate social responsibility dissemination; market or competitive research; staff productivity; recruitment; project management.

Best practice for social networking

In an ideal world, the best way to tackle the challenges of introducing and benefitting from social networking is for corporates to build their own social networking framework that includes all the productivity tools employees need without recourse to them using their personal tools at work. Software developers such as Jive, Yammer, Social Text, YourMembership.com, Select Minds, SocialGO, WackWall and Ning offer different approaches.

Industry heavyweights such as the Cisco Collaboration platform provide options for big multinationals that include telepresence, unified communications and customized Instant Messaging options. Google Wave offers a centralized Web resource for collaboration across text, video, and document creation and sharing that provides an interactive record of social networking sessions.

In order to properly deploy any social networking system, best practice dictates that:

• There be a plan in place to monitor and mitigate potential reputational risks associated with inappropriate social networking site usage
• The divide between a right to know what employees are expressing online with their right to retain privacy is mitigated, and kept in context by helping them understand appropriate usage
• A code of ethics should be maintained and updated regularly, such as this one from Marks & Spencer
• Discussion of the use of social networking in the corporation must be elevated to the board level, as it is a strategic issue.

How social media adds value

• Organizational and geographical boundaries are bridged, with corporate information and discussion taking place on central, shared resources such as blogs and wikis, rather than on email or on the phone
• Teams can easily find the information they need, because social networking adds context, tags and social bookmarks to data that helps others find it more rapidly
• Employees with specific skill sets can easily connect with co-workers through user profiles and expert searches, and gain information that helps them do their job more productively.

Social media business leaders

• Best Western sponsors ‘On The Go With Amy,’ an evolving travelogue
• IBM Bloggers are encouraged to post to the site
• Coca-Cola employee Phil Mooney blogs on Coca-Cola Conversations
• Ford has pioneered Social Media Press Releases to communicate news using a variety of formats
• Kodak has dedicated a whole site to the development of social interaction with potential customers called 1000 Words.
• …As does Johnson & Johnson
• The New York Times has launched TimesPeople Beta, its social networking community
• Starbucks is currently asking its customers how to run the company, through My Starbucks Idea
• Suppository brand, Anusol, has launched a Facebook community
• MTV has extended its brand into the lives of viewers by offering an online interactive resource called Think MTV that deals with social issues.

The full article can be found here