Companies view customer experience as one of their top priorities

Use customer experiences as a competitive differentiator

Source: The State Of Customer Experience, Management, 2013

Companies are focusing on online, cross channel, mobile and social customer experiences

Few companies deliver an outstanding customer experience

2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Source: January 15, 2013, The State Of Customer Experience, 2013 Forrester report

Good customer experiences are good for business

Customer service managers agree that customer experience is important

And many companies have good alignment between their customer service and customer experience strategy
What is the relationship between your customer service strategy, and your customer experience strategy?
We don't have a customer experience strategy. 2%

We are in the process of aligning our customer service strategy to our customer experience strategy. 14%

Customer service and customer experience strategic goals are well aligned. Our customer service strategy is a cornerston 84%

Base: 50 US Enterprise customer experience or customer service managers Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium, March, 2013
2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 8

Forrester-Lithium study background

In March 2013, Forrester Consulting completed a commissioned survey on behalf of Lithium to explore the rise in demand for social customer service, the maturity of these communication channels and realized benefits for responding to changing customer needs around social channels. We surveyed 50 US managers of customer experience or customer service at enterprises that offered social customer service.

2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Customers want support when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it. Otherwise it will be hard to keep them.

Consumers want quick answers to questions or will abandon

Realize that communication channel usage has changed in the last three years

Companies believe it is important provide customer service over a range of channels

How important is it to your company to provide customer service via the following communication channels? 4 Phone Web self-service Email Online customer community Online FAQs Public social networks IVR (automated voice response on phone) Chat SMS 28% 30% 42% 38% 38% 30% 32% 26% 22% 8% 8% 22% 10% 26% 24% Most important 5 60% 56% 30%

Base: 50 US Enterprise customer experience or customer service managers Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium, March, 2013
2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

But, realize that not all channels have similar satisfaction ratings

Our study also shows that maturity is still lacking in nascent customer service channels, such as social
How mature do you believe your operational processes are to support customers across the following channels? Rank 4 Phone Email Web self-service Online FAQs IVR (automated voice response on phone) 22% 32% 40% 24% 22% 8% 18% 12% 32% 32% 42% 30% 18% 4% Most mature 5 82% 50% 44% 20%

Online customer community

Chat Public social networks SMS

Base: 50 US Enterprise customer experience or customer service managers Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium, March, 2013
2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 15

There is room for improvement in delivering customer service via social channels
On a scale of 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent), how proficient do you feel your organization is currently when it comes to providing the following customer service capabilities? Rank 3 Empowering our social customer service agents with customer and product information that they need to answer customer questions Successfully nurturing and growing our online community forum Allowing our customers to start a conversation on our forum, and escalate to a customer service agent if it is unresolved Allowing our customers to receive the same level of service from our social channels compared to what is offered on the digital channels (email, chat) Allowing customer service agents to handle social inquiries via Personal Social Media Networks and Microblogs 16% Rank 2 4% 6% Poor - 1

22%

8%

8%

26%

12%

8%

28%

12%

8%

34%

10%

16%

Base: 50 US Enterprise customer experience or customer service managers Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium, March, 2013

What can you do to make your social customer service better?

Customers

Service Manager

I know how I want to deliver good social customer but I dont know where to start.

2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Start by understanding who your customers are and how they want to interact with you

Source: Understand Communication Channel Needs To Craft Your Customer Service Strategy, March 2013

Understand the journey that customers expect to have with your company

Empower your agents with the right information to make social interactions successful

20

And dedicate agents to the social channels

In general, what is your contact center's approach to having agents serve customers through multiple channels?
Most of our agents support multiple channels, but some are specialists (e.g., social media)

49%

All of our agents support multiple channels (e.g., voice, chat, email)

28%

Most or all of our agents are specialists and support only a single channel

16%

Does not apply - our contact center only has one mode of communication (e.g., voice)

6%

Base: 272 North American Enterprise Network and Telecommunications decision makers Source: Forrester Forrsights Networks and Telecommunications Survey, Q1 2013

Investing social customer service is good for business

What business benefit are you achieving by offering social customer service to your customers? (Rank the top 3)
Top benefit
Increase customer satisfaction as measured by NPS or CSAT Improve customer loyalty Reduce support costs/incoming support calls

2nd benefit 16% 14% 10% 8%

3rd benefit 16% 14%

24% 26% 16% 8% 8% 4% 4% 10% 6% 10% 10% 4%

Improve agent efficiency

Increased rate of new customer acquisition Bring new customer ideas to market Reduce customer churn Increase number of cross-sells and upsells to current customers Increase awareness through word-of-mouth marketing Increased share of wallet per customers Increased average order size Boost SEO

14% 16% 12%

6% 4% 4% 8% 6%

4%2%
4% 4% 6%

2%

Base: 50 US Enterprise customer experience or customer service managers

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium, March, 2013
2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 22

And not investing in social technologies carries risks to your company

What are the perceived risks of not adopting social technologies in your customer service organization?
Fear of being left behind from a technology perspective Competitive disadvantage (e.g. lose market share, lose ground to competitors) Poor overall experience 48%

56%

56%

Inconsistent customer service delivery

46%

Customer defection

40%

Internal operational inefficiencies

26%

Base: 50 US Enterprise customer experience or customer service managers Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Lithium, March, 2013

Thank you
Kate Leggett kleggett@forrester.com

Matching

Globe receives an average of 34,000 tweets a month with a feedback turn-around time target of 5 minutes, which promises to soon be the fastest turn-around time in the world. This volume and reply speed requirement is delivered with the support of a world class tool Lithium Social Web.