Cisco software helps businesses embrace social media

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 04 November 2010 11:13

Business IT - Technology

Cisco has announced SocialMiner, software that enables companies to find and proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, or other public forums or blogging sites.

According to Cisco, it enables status updates, forum posts or blogs from customers to be monitored in real time, alerting enterprises of conversations related to their brand and to engage with customers that require service.

Cisco says: "Social media is booming, but its use by businesses is largely ad hoc, unstructured, and unable to scale. Cisco's expertise '¦enables the company to offer businesses an enterprise-class solution for proactive social media customer care."

John Hernandez, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Customer Collaboration Business Unit, said: "Companies are realising that by ignoring the online chatter, they're opening up opportunities for their competitors and allowing dialogue about their brand to happen without them."

Cisco's claims for the status of businesses interaction with social media are borne out by recent studies. PR firm Weber Shandwick and HR firm Spencer Stuart have just released the results of a joint survey of chief communications officers in large companies that found them struggling to cope with the growing threat to brand and reputation posed by social media, and diverting resources from other key priorities.

Eighteen months ago the author of a Datamonitor study 'The Rise of Social Networking and Emerging Channels in Customer Service' warned: "Social networks will not be a flash-in-the-pan craze and will not simply disappear or burn themselves out. Companies that choose to simply ignore this trend will relegate themselves to the outdated, fuddy-duddy camp '¦ and more worryingly, maybe even to obsolescence."

With SocialMiner, Cisco says: "By providing social media monitoring, queuing, and workflow, customer posts on social media networks are organised and delivered to social media customer care teams, allowing companies to respond to customers in real-time through the originating social network."

It claims that: "Customers see rapid response from businesses that are providing value-added engagement when and where consumers are seeking it. Additionally, consumers will see the benefit of enterprises engaging with them to provide service and information, rather than having to find information on their own through company web sites'¦Through proactive engagements with customers, companies can enhance relationships immediately, address potential consumers or product issues, generate proactive sales opportunities and manage brand perceptions."

The company also announced Cisco Finesse, billed as "a new solution combines traditional contact centre functions with Cisco Quad enterprise social-software capabilities'¦[allowing] businesses to integrate collaboration technology and business applications to give contact centre agents the tools to provide the best possible customer experience."