GET THE JUNE 2013 UPDATE AT http://digitaldevotee.com/social-media-customer-service-tool-comparison-june-2013/ Over the past year there’s been a lot of growth in the social media customer service area. There are a number of tools on the market you can use to coordinate, answer and report on customer inquiries in the social media space. We’ve seen groups like Salesforce buying up desk.com to add to its existing Service Cloud while leaders like Zendesk continue to do great work. If you’re looking to do more advocate style communities think about Lithium and if you’re headed to China SNS then check out CIC‘s beta of IWOM Cooperator.

1. Social Media
Customer Service
PLATFORM
COMPARISON
December 2012
taura.edgar@digitaldevotee.com

2. SOCIAL MEDIA CUSTOMER SERVICE PLATFORM COMPARISON
CHANNELS
Cost / yr Setup Fee Summary Self Social Social Email Website Phone Mobile Live Chat FAQ Self Service Communit SLA Multi- CRM Post-sales Corp Group Website
5 operators Setup Intl China Templates FAQ y Reponse Reporting language integration support near HK
FAQ Trad Chinese possible
Zendesk USD3,540 n/a Leader in social media customer X X Renren if X X X X X X X X X X X Australia, independent http://www.zendesk.com
Plus pkg service arena with long history and using simple only need 3rd advanced Philippines
robust tools for enterprise clients. HootSuite party like w/
Zendesk Olark to www.good
+ Olark App embed in data.com
USD2,640 FB
Desk USD2,940 n/a Strong social media customer service X X X X X X X X X X X California Salesforce http://www.desk.com/
player best for small to medium coming need 3rd not UI
+ Olark clients with limited integration to 2Q2013 party like
USD2,640 other Salesforce tools. Olark for
multichat
Service USD8,100 undisclosed Enterprise level customer servicing X X X X X X X X X X X X X Australia, Salesforce http://www.salesforce.com/a
Cloud Enterprise tool that integrates with all other not CTI Philippines, India p/service-cloud/overview/
Edition Salesforce tools for optimizing sales recom integration
leads. mende (2 biz days
(+ fees for d response unless
many eg Note: Their structure makes it hard to purchase Premier
knowledge buy bundled services smoothly. plan for 15% cost
base & mobile Expect long sales/implementation of Enterprise
http://www.sa periods with many extra costs. Edition)
lesforce.com/a
p/crm/editions-
pricing-
service.jsp)
Lithium USD1,250 USD10,000+ Experienced community building X X X X X X X  X Singapore independent http://www.lithium.com/
platform with usual servicing tools not UI
plus advanced community advocacy /
support tools.
IWOM USD15,600 n/a Established monitoring group in X X X X X X Simplified X Shanghai CIC http://cooperator.iwommaster.c
Cooperator China added social servicing tool with planned planned for planned for planned for planned for Chinese with Kantar om/index.jsp
SINA
(beta) Fortune 500 clients trialling. Tool also weibo, for Jan Jan 2013 Jan 2013 Jan 2013 Jan 2013 some English
allows publishing to multiple Tencent 2013 used
accounts. Major update to Weibo
functionality scheduled for Jan 2013 (WeChat/
Renren/D
ouban
soon)
taura.edgar@digitaldevotee.com