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Social media seen as key element of multi-channel communications strategy by contact centre leaders

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• 67% surveyed reported building social media into their contact centre strategy
  
• Over one in ten already harnessing social media - Facebook and Twitter are favourites
  
• 42% planning higher investment in their contact centres in 2011

From its survey of senior contact centre decision makers, ProtoCall One, the leading contact centre consultancy and systems integrator, found that two out of three (67%) of contact centres favour harnessing social media in their multi-channel communications strategy to enhance communication with their customers. Just over one in ten (12%) reported themselves as being ahead of the pack by currently reaping the benefits of social media, with one in five (18%) already using Facebook and Twitter in their communication strategies. At the other end of the spectrum, just over one in six (17%) of those polled shunned social media preferring instead to improve alternative types of multi-channel communications like email, text and web chat before adopting these new types of social media.

Overall the contact centre leader respondents appeared optimistic with nearly half (42%) reporting an increase in contact centre investment for 2011 over last year and just under one in three (29%) reporting that they plan to maintain their 2010 IT spend.  15% said they needed to demonstrate a return on investment within eighteen months with cost reduction cited as the primary business case goal, with just under one in three (29%) reporting this need. One in four managers (25%) said they are looking to improve, their levels of customer experience, which aligns with the social media findings, and just over one in ten (12%) said they needed to migrate their customers to lower cost channels. This suggests that most managers feel that they have the most economical communications strategy in place already.

The survey was carried out at the recent ProtoCall One Customer Experience Day attended by a cross-section of customers and prospects from a wide range of both public and private industry sectors.

Paul Weald, Strategy Director at ProtoCall One said: “These findings reflect the positive conversations that we are currently having with our customers and prospects around how they can find innovative ways of communicating with their customers. There is an increasing level of awareness of what social media could offer – together with a greater understanding of the business rationale of being either a leader or a follower in adopting these emerging channels.”

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About ProtoCall One

ProtoCall One is a leading contact centre consultancy and systems integrator, specialising in multi-channel communications, virtual contact centres and workforce optimisation. The company provides solutions to help businesses improve how they connect with their customers across multiple contact channels such as email, web chat, SMS and social media.

ProtoCall One helps contact centre operations to improve customer experience; set and manage agent efficiency and effectiveness KPIs; optimise proactive outbound productivity; and use social media communications to engage in positive customer dialogue.

In addition, ProtoCall One helps operators implement virtual contact centres; integrate home agents; fully exploit self-service and proactively reduce call volumes. ProtoCall One also assists companies to implement best practice in contact centres enabling them to win industry awards. At a higher level, ProtoCall One works with contact centre operations heads to benchmark current performance and build business cases for future technology investment.

The company is regarded as the UK’s leading Genesys solutions expert. It delivers innovative solutions for major UK and global organisations, both direct and working alongside systems integration partners including BT and Cable & Wireless Worldwide. The company supports global customers from its offices in Buckinghamshire, UK and Sydney, Australia.

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