1. Connecting social media to customer service, sales, and product development is a
challenge faced by any company with a serious social presence. But companies at the
forefront of social business find ways to use social media to connect internal teams to
customers, surface product innovations, and decrease cost of service. Social business is
hard, but the rewards are real.
Access the full webinar and slides at ar.gy/triplecrown.
Integrating with Sales & Marketing
While social media connects consumers to
companies, in many ways it also amplifies the Other Inbound
Social Leads Leads
divide between sales and marketing.
Point of Facebook, Twitter, Email, Lead form,
Sales has pre-existing processes for dealing with entry LinkedIn Trade show
leads. Inbound leads have a specific funnel,
outbound leads have a specific funnel, but sales Informal, Formal,
Tone
doesn’t know how to effectively process social leads conversational professional
yet.
Process organic, winding formulaic, linear
Social-sourced leads require different
Type of soft sell - focus on normal tone /
relationship management. If you can’t pass the
sale lead’s needs messaging
baton from social to sales and marketing, you’ll lose
the race.

2. Synching with Customer Service
Once you’ve hired a talented team to staff the social support station, do you have the processes in place
to transfer their knowledge into systems, so that knowledge can get to where it does the most good?
Step 1: Connect Social to Your Existing Support Systems
Every organization has systems to collect, track, and
resolve customer support issues. The first step
towards integrating social media into your support What is Symmetry of Response?
processes is making sure your community managers
Good customer service means communicating with
are able to quickly and easily create cases based on
the customer on their terms. A customer phone call
social signals. Let the existing machinery work as it
leads to a phone conversation. An email inquiry
is--just make sure you’re also listening in the social
leads to an email response. In the same way, a
sphere.
question fielded from a social channel should be
responded to via that same social channel. That’s
Step 2: Enable Symmetry of Response
symmetry of response.
Now that social is feeding into your existing
customer support systems, it’s time to elevate your
game. You need to be talking to customers where they are instead of making them come to you. If a
customer reports an issue to you via email, you email them back. In the same way, if a customer reports
an issue to you via social channels, you need to respond to them in kind. This can be a challenging
problem to tackle, but it creates an incredibly high degree of customer loyalty when done well.
Inspiring Product Development
the baton.
Real-time feedback loops created by social media
accelerate the product cycle and infuse creativity Share the knowledge!
and outside-the-box thinking into your design Once your feedback has been collected, make
process. But delivering actionable feedback to sure all of the requisite teams can get their hands
your team while minimizing the noise isn’t easy. on it. Have regular feedback sessions with UX/UI,
technology, and product management
What type of feedback are you collecting?
Not all feedback is created equal. By asking the Consider the following:
right questions via social channels before • Social has unique insights into the voice of the
forwarding the feedback along to the product customer. Share it.
team, you’ll enable them to think big. Remember, • Social enables your company to create cost-
your product people don’t spend nearly as much effective and efficient focus groups.
(or any!) time communicating with your • Feedback becomes infinitely more valuable
customers via social channels, so they need you to when it’s shared across teams.
get all of the information possible before passing
Argyle Social helps businesses drive results through
social media. Publish, engage, and measure your social
media efforts with an intuitive and powerful tool.
Learn more at argylesocial.com.
Follow us on Twitter @ArgyleSocial