Integrating Social Media Channels into Existing CRM Systems and Processes

The year is 2024, and you just walked into a department store to return a pair of jeans. As you enter the store, the near field communication (NFC) chip in your smartphone tells the store who you are because you have enabled the privacy settings to do so. The store knows you're an active fan on Facebook. You're even classified as one of theirambassadors. You've been identified as afrustratedcustomer after posting a comment on the company's Wall about your brand new jeans being defective. One of the sales representatives receives an alert message that you've arrived, and she's waiting for you in the jean section, holding a new pair of the same jeans, in your size, ready to make an exchange. The NFC chip in your phone has already confirmed your identity, reducing the need to show a receipt, credit card, or drivers license. You're out the door with a new pair of jeans faster than you're able to post a raving review on their Facebook wall, reclassifying you as anadvocatein their CRM system.

"They replaced my busted jeans without even asking a question!"

OK, the year is not 2024, Cisco doesn't sell jeans, and I've only been able to use NFC once in the year I've had it on my smartphone. But haven't you wished that the company you just called already knew the past phone, email, even Facebook conversations you've had with them so that you didn't need to explain yourself to them again and again? Isn't your time valuable, shouldn't all of their systems talk to each other to create a better, not worse experience for you?

On December 19, I wrote a blog post about the new pilot we were launching in Social Media Marketing to capture and most importantly integrate leads from social media channels like Twitter into our Global Demand Center.  Read more about the process here, but in effect we integrated our Click-to-Chat Agents into our Twitter listening and management system. This function is a subset of our larger Social ABCs and Social CRM program.

On Wednesday, January 23, a little over a month after launching the pilot, we successfully initiated our first click-to-chat session, identified via Twitter listening, and routed through the MarketingCloud Engagement Console to our Global Demand Center. This was the first time that we had a customer's complete history in front of us before responding to them on Twitter.

"Hello Dee, I see you already know who I am."

As you can see in the excerpt below, the agent (Dee) already knew who the customer was, and unbeknownst to the customer, had all past interactions and chat transcripts available to him. Dee didn't need to ask the same qualifying questions, and was able to focus on helping the customer identify the best switch for their business.

After ending an unsuccessful chat session, and reverting to Twitter for help, the customer left knowing exactly which product to purchase, even located a reseller, and gave the chat agent an "excellent" review before ending the session.

The promise of fully knowing a customer, where they've been, where they are, and where they want to go, is beginning to become reality as we connect these once disparate communications channels with proven CRM practices at Cisco.

How is your company trying to connect customer experience and integrate into a true Social CRM system?