Genesys addresses channel integration, social media

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 19 August 2010 14:04

Business IT - Technology

Have you ever become frustrated by organisation's inability to handle multiple communications channels properly? Do you think anyone at your bank is listening when you tweet about an excessively long queue or an ATM that's out of action for the third time in a week?

You're working through a web-based transaction - perhaps a travel booking or transferring funds between bank accounts - and you run into a snag. Perhaps you need more detailed information than provided on the site, maybe you need to know how something relates to your personal circumstances, or perhaps the web site simply crashed.

So you phone the company concerned, and even after identifying yourself the agent has no idea why you're calling until you explain from scratch. Tedious.

It's also increasingly common for people to turn to online forums as an initial source of help rather than using vendors' own customer care services. (That could be because they've become frustrated with help lines that keep them on hold for excessive periods before suggesting things they've already tried before resorting to the old standby of reinstalling the operating system and other software.)

Financial software vendor Intuit has found that 70% of customer service questions are being fulfilled by other customers via social media, said Eric Tamblyn, vice president, product marketing, contact centre solutions, in Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise division.

Even where a forum is operated by the vendor concerned, answers are usually left to fellow users. But wouldn't it be better if the company was alerted if a satisfactory answer hadn't been received within say 48 hours?

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