“It’s no secret that Khoros Engage is not just a conference,” said Spike Jones, Senior Vice President of Strategic Services at Khoros in his opening remarks. So, what caused 500+ busy executives and managers from brands including USAA, Google, and Facebook to fly into Austin? I wouldn’t fault you for thinking it was for the breakfast tacos; they are mighty good. But the truth is, Khoros Engage truly is “a family reunion.” Everyone came to discuss the state of the union for digital customer experience today. Although many topics were discussed at Engage, this article dives into some key takeaways that can benefit all digital customer engagement professionals in their effort to create customers for life.   Brands win by leading in digital customer engagement   Khoros CEO Jack Blaha and CMO Katherine Calvert discussed the extremely high expectations of modern customers, in a new normal where brands are either “loved, or left.” This is true for every brand, across every industry, around the world. Whether you are a B2C or B2B brand, it’s vital to recognize that your customers have moved on from the days of being impressed by the best product. We’ve moved on to a new frontier: the relationship age. Today people buy from the brands that create and maintain a strong relationship with them. So how can your brand stand out in the areas your customers care about? It starts with taking a hard look at where you’ve fallen short. For example, 88% of brands think they are engaging with customers at every point of need, but only 15% of customers say they regularly see brands engaging with them. To learn the most common divides between brands and customers, read our recent report created in partnership with the Forrester Consulting Group. But being a digital leader doesn’t just mean adapting how your brand operates, it means adapting your own mindset. #1 New York Times Bestselling author Erik Qualman shared several great habits that will come in handy for every digital customer engagement professional looking to improve in their role. One of the most important ways is to develop a “not-to-do list”, or at least, a “not-to-do-yet list”. As Erik asked the crowd: “What’s the one thing that, if you do it well, will make everything else easier or unnecessary?” By determining that one thing, you can know what to attack first and control your urge to multi-task (which, real talk, often causes you to be unproductive).   Paid and organic social media are better together   Some things are just better together, like Spredfast and Lithium (shameless plug: check). Although organic and paid social media can seem to be at odds with each other, the truth is they are both equally important — and together can bring better results than they could individually. Paid social media is vital for getting your products in front of your prospects and customers today. As National Instruments Social Media Strategist and Global Program Manager Danielle Stapleton put it, “we work in a pay-to-play world.” At the same time, today’s social media users still actively seek out knowledge from others and likely always will, as “social media’s roots are in community.” The organic value of people reading peer comments about your products and seeing how you value customers will never go away. These two types of social media aren’t complicated, and they are both here to stay, as Danielle illustrated with one of her favorite tweets: Another great takeaway came from Cigna’s Global Social Media Manager Kristel Vite, who showed that organic content can be effectively repurposed for paid ads. Citing Cigna’s Body-Mind Connection campaign, Kristel described how the brand created a video with the help of Queen Latifah, Nick Jonas, and Ted Danson, which all three stars shared on their social media channels. This strategy netted the brand 5.4M+ earned views across owned and talent social media channels. Then, Cigna put money behind personalized content related to the campaign for their prospects. With creative approaches like this, brands can raise awareness and influence acquisition to a greater extent.   Proving the ROI of customer engagement is possible   Is there any social media manager out there who’s never had a mini panic attack when asked to show the business results of their work? In a room packed wall-to-wall, digital leaders from Synchrony and SAP shared exactly how they prove ROI, with numbers. Yes, numbers. And not the vanity kind. Note that proving ROI will look different for every brand as they each have unique goals for social media. But in doing so, more investment can be secured in the channel. Here are some of the exact KPIs the panelists use in their organization to prove ROI. How Synchrony’s VP of Social Media Nicole Johnson proves ROI: Greater awareness for what the brand is and what they do in third-party studies Positive share of voice Relevant share of voice Faster average time to acquire customers How SAP’s Senior Director of Product Marketing Kosta Triantafillou proves ROI: Positive brand sentiment shown in survey results, including NPS Lower cost per acquisition Shorter path to acquisition   Concluding thoughts   Becoming a digital leader doesn’t happen overnight, and once it’s achieved, brands must continue to find and execute new ways to deliver a better experience for their customers, in order to meet their ever-growing expectations. As Samsung’s Senior Vice President of Customer Care Michael Lawder said, “the world is changing, and today, customer expectations are not set by competitors, but by every interaction that customers have with the brand they like most.”  ... View more

How well does your business leverage social media to provide a great customer service experience? A Smart Insights study found that 80% of companies believethey deliver exceptional customer service on social media, yet only 8% of customers seemed to agree. Sure enough, the same study found one in three customer complaints are completely ignored. Keeping up with the growing number of social media users isn’t easy for businesses. According to Brandwatch, about 3.5 billion people actively use social media and that number is increasing every day. When used efficiently, social media offers the ability to provide exceptional customer service and increase brand loyalty. The challenge, however, is that many companies don’t understand a core element of using social media: the difference between social media monitoring and social media listening. For companies that do understand both of these concepts, many are only utilizing one when they should be incorporating both for a well-rounded social media strategy. In this post, we're going to dive deep into the differences between social media monitoring and social media listening. By understanding each concept, your business can improve customer interactions on social media and better understand which issues matter to your audience. If you’d like a refresher on customer expectations and care best practices before reading on, check out our Digital Customer Care Playbook. What is social media monitoring? Think of social media monitoring as a brand’s customer support over social media. With social media monitoring, a customer care representative monitors the social media platforms your business engages on and responds to customer posts. Businesses should also monitor mentions where a tag isn’t used, as some customers will name the business without linking. Generally, there are three types of posts people in charge of social media monitoring are responsible for responding to: 1. Questions Let’s say you run an airline, and a customer tags your brand name on social media to find out the cost of extra luggage. A business utilizing good social media monitoring practices will quickly reach out to that customer with relevant pricing data and other information. The customer may have follow-up questions, so the representative should stick around and ask if there’s anything else they can assist with. 2. Issues or complaints In the same example, imagine the customer is later upset because the plane did not offer free in-flight wifi. In today’s connected world, airlines must learn how to address issues quickly to defend their brand. Leaving issues unattended is like choosing not to pick up the phone at a customer support center, except this is worse because other users will see that your business ignores customers. To avoid this, businesses use social media monitoring to quickly respond to customer complaints. The response and action vary by business and situation, but it’s important to remain calm and polite even in cases where the customer is at fault. The airline in this situation could respond to the upset customer by telling them the wifi cost was listed on the flight’s page. However, this could generate backlash from users on that social media platform who perceive the response as rude. Instead, the airline could better handle the situation by apologizing that the information was not clearly communicated and tell the customer what steps they’ll take to prevent this issue from happening again. Depending on the severity of the situation, a business may also offer discounts or vouchers as a last resort to help reconcile with the upset customer. 3. Positive feedback Keep an eye out for the positive comments people post about your business as well! Too often these posts are ignored because businesses don’t see a reason to act, but not replying is like hanging up on a thankful customer without saying anything. Best social media monitoring practices say you should promptly respond to the customer with some variation of: “We’re happy to have helped; please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to further assist you...” For example, the image below shows how an apartment complex responded to someone who posted a positive review after visiting the property. The message is timely, personalized, and genuinely expresses gratitude towards the reviewer for sharing their feedback. These thank you messages will leave your customer with a positive experience that ultimately helps strengthen brand loyalty. What is social media listening? Social media listening involves pulling data from all social media platforms to see how customers are interacting with your business. This process is much more complex and time-consuming than social media monitoring, which is why few businesses are properly utilizing social media listening to better understand their audience. Although there are several facets to social media listening, the three most important things to do are: 1. Track social mentions Social media monitoring is a part of social media listening, so track the mentions you get while responding to customer inquiries and incorporate the data into an audience report. Tracking mentions where the business isn’t tagged is especially important with social media listening, as the data is still relevant even if a response isn’t required. In fact, you may want to look at mentions to your competitors and industry as a whole, even if your business isn’t named. The point is to gather information about your audience, such as: Which platforms are used most by your audience? How frequently is your brand mentioned? Which competitors get the most mentions? Is your industry actively discussed? With this information, you can generate insights that will help you better understand your audience and the state of the market as a whole. 2. Read conversations and content Don’t just tally mentions, see what people are actually saying. Read conversations and content related to your brand and industry so you can know what your audience cares about. For example, look to see if your audience is consistently talking about something your business does. If the feedback is positive, look at how you might be able to replicate what’s helping it do well in other areas of your business. In the case of negative feedback, acknowledge the issue and apologize for the inconvenience, take note that this issue is important to your audience, and think about what your company could do to improve. Negative feedback is challenging, but it’s also an opportunity to help someone in need and create loyalty. To learn more, read our blog post. Look at what people are saying about your competitors as well, as this could help you capitalize on an area they struggle with, or see what people like about them and build upon their success with further improvements. Look at conversation threads on social media and blogs across the web to get a well-rounded perspective of how people are discussing your industry. 3. Implement changes based on feedback After doing the research, it’s time to take action. The insights you find are only valuable if you’re actually going to take the time to implement changes that will better serve your audience. For example, consistently answering the same question from different customers means there is a clear information gap that should be addressed. You could use social media monitoring to provide a short term solution by responding to these inquiries individually, but a better solution would be utilizing social media listening to recognize the issue and suggest adding the question to the FAQ section of your company’s website or online community. So, what’s the difference between social media monitoring and listening? Many businesses engage in some form of social media monitoring, but few take the next step by using social media listening to better serve customers through the implementation of changes based on audience insights. Social media monitoring is a short-term solution by reacting to what your audience is saying, such as responding to a customer complaint. Social media listening is a proactive process that aims to create a long-term solution by making changes derived from audience insights, such as fixing an issue people complained about so more people don’t have the same problem. Research from MarketingSherpa shows 95% of 18 to 34-year-olds follow brands on social media, so having a well rounded social media strategy is essential for businesses looking to connect with audiences. Don’t miss out on opportunities to engage with your audience and strengthen brand loyalty.  See how Khoros helps the world’s leading brands to excel on social media with our advanced and easy-to-use Customer Engagement Platform. And if you’d like to learn more about delivering exceptional support, read our whitepaper: Digital Customer Care Playbook. ... View more

We’re excited to announce significant new enhancements to our industry-leading digital customer support solution Khoros Care. As of July 11, 2019, all Khoros Care customers will have access to branded in-app messaging, automation framework, and agent activity metrics — all included with your current Care subscription. In addition, Khoros Care now supports Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp for businesses interested in leveraging these channels in their customer care workflow. Khoros Care customers can leverage these new features to add immediate value: Branded in-app messaging offers your customers a contemporary messaging experience within your existing, brand-owned mobile app. An enhanced universal automation capability enables you to fully leverage the promise and power of AI, offloading repetitive or routine tasks to keep agents focused on providing the customer experience your brand is known for. Industry-leading agent activity metrics provide a powerful new set of measurements designed to properly account for agent performance so that you can run your digital engagement team with the same efficiency and utilization metrics as your call center. Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp integration options allow your brand to use consumers' preferred method of communication — texting — and shift volume away from phone support. Read on for a detailed look at how each of these innovations help your brand to deliver better, more efficient customer care than ever before — and reap the savings and customer satisfaction that come with it. Branded In-App Messaging Khoros Brand Messenger provides the tools you need to build contemporary messaging into your branded mobile app. Khoros provides a software development kit (SDK) for both IOS and Android so that you can quickly build mobile messaging into app messaging that flows through Khoros Care’s unified workflow console just like any other messaging. Branded in-app messaging means your business can participate directly in messaging, the most exciting new development in customer care. And, you can do it in a channel that you own and control: your own branded messenger, built right into your mobile app. With help from our technical and professional services teams, you’ll be up and running quickly. Automation Framework The Khoros Automation Framework is an agnostic service that supports integration of any bot or AI-assisted robotic process into the Khoros Care workflow. This framework offers you a no-compromises path to automation: It’s an incredibly feature-rich application programming interface (API) integration that extends well beyond simple chatbots, allowing you to connect any automation into the Khoros Care Platform. Get ready for summer: Bring your own bot. Agent Activity Metrics The Khoros Summer Innovation Release also includes our patent-pending Agent Activity Metrics, a fully redesigned and industry-leading set of metrics illuminating social media/digital agent utilization and efficiency by providing the data you need to drive your workforce management and staff-planning tools. Khoros Agent Activity Metrics was developed with direct input from many of our largest customers — customers who needed real-time, granular data to drive dynamic staff-planning models — to provide insights into agent efficiency and utilization and to help prepare and scale up as digital engagement teams grow from 10 to 50 to 500 to more than 1,000 agents. Agent Activity Metrics provides the insights you need to grow and deliver on your cost and satisfaction-centric business objectives. Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Last but not least, the Khoros Summer Innovation Release also includes support for Apple Business Chat along with the world’s leading messaging service — WhatsApp. Both flow through the Khoros Care unified social media and messaging platform, so setup and use by agents are straightforward. “What about re-training?” you may be asking. Because both of these follow the workflow you’ve already established, there is no re-training. How’s that for easy implementation and cost-control? Want to learn more? To get going with these new enhancements, simply connect with your account executive. They’ll be happy to discuss what Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp, Agent Activity Metrics, Automation Framework, and our In-app messaging SDK can do for your brand. And if you’re not currently a Khoros Care customer, request a demo here. ... View more