The ever increasing adoption of socially connected content combined with search engine generated content demands that marketers reconsider their online knowledge management strategy. The value of marketing jumped significantly when enterprises (including Service Providers) recognized their investments in the web (generally via the marketing and marketing communications departments) hadn't only increased their customer's vocal power as well as their buying power. Social CRM applications dragged marketers into the customer care front whining all the way from old school ROI models to newer, unproven sandboxes. However, it wasn't social media that began the call to action into the contact center.
Retail provides us a blueprint into the new consumer ecosystem.
Retail customers' behavior has already embraced the web and mobile applications as part of their buying cycle. Contact with companies became more intimate: I am walking the aisles of a store WITH a company in hand. Our "discussion" didn't just take place after I buy something and I needed help. Conversations with companies begin at home on a PC or tablet connected to the web when I collect information before I ever enter the doors of an establishment. Post purchase our dialogue continues with the contact center, and doesn't generally begin there as it did in the past. Consequently, customer service has taken on an additional role in the information gathering and in the purchase stages of the buying cycle. Agents now shop with their new-found friends at brick and mortar outlets. But are CSRs prepared for consumers who price shop using connected applications to read UPC codes and other ID mechanisms?
Further, the convergence of revenue and cost center confuses some companies. Cross channel communications, while a great cost benefit in general, can also become a long term revenue drain when brand suffers from channel inconsistency or subpar CSR training. While marketing didn't participate in the conversation before now and was stove-piped from operational decisions in the past, the costs associated with marketing became the opportunities lost in the new value chain, created by the web and reinforced by mobility.
No company can risk having their data and their customer satisfaction degenerated when smarter cross functional decisions can easily be made utilizing tried and true enterprise content management techniques and applications combined with the social inputs that can help drive a richer experience for consumers and for agents and other constituents. Increasingly organizations require robust knowledge management platforms to help guide self-service and to personalize the customer experience for consumers who are very eager to have a conversation. And for employees to have the voice and training required to meet the new demands.
Make your wealth of knowledge relevant, dynamic, and available anywhere, anytime. At the very least we'll deliver better content and learn something about what our customers want to know about us if we do.
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