Shift to Social Media in Contact Centers: A New Era of Workforce Management

If you support a contact center, you might have noticed a reduction in headcount across traditional channels like voice, chat, and email. But what does this mean? Are organizations shutting down their support services? Not quite. Instead, they are reallocating resources, reducing the number of agents in these traditional channels, and routing support through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, WeChat, Twitter, and Telegram etc….

Organizations are focusing on cost-effective strategies. They aim to optimize resources so that agents can serve multiple customers simultaneously, rather than being tied up with one or two customers on a call/chat. This shift is still emerging but offers significant potential—not only in reporting but also in enhancing efficiency in planning, forecasting, real-time, and scheduling.

Rise of Social Media as a Communication Channel

Social media as a communication channel is still in its infancy, but it’s becoming increasingly crucial as companies expand their customer service offerings to platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Here are some types of contacts in social media that help measure volume:

• Interactions: These are individual touchpoints between customers and agents, such as comments, direct messages, or replies.
• Sessions: These are sequences of interactions within a single customer engagement, like a customer’s query and the subsequent back-and-forth with an agent until resolution.
• Cases: These pertain to overarching issues or problems that customers report, which may span multiple sessions and interactions.

Adapting WFM strategies to Social Media

Managing these interactions in WFM requires adapting traditional approaches to fit the dynamic and often unpredictable nature of social media. Key considerations include:

1. Volume Forecasting: Understanding trends in customer inquiries, spikes during campaigns, or product launches to allocate resources effectively.
2. Real-time Monitoring: Social media moves fast, so response SLAs should be shorter compared to other channels.
3. Skill-based Assignment: Matching agents with the expertise needed to handle specific cases or social media platforms.
4. Sentiment Analysis: Incorporating tools to gauge customer sentiment and prioritize urgent or high-stakes interactions.
5. Agent Flexibility: Ensuring agents can switch between cases or channels seamlessly based on demand.

Social media is still evolving, but it offers a lot of scope for efficiency gains in the modern WFM era. As organizations continue to explore and refine these strategies, the role of social media in customer support will only grow more significant.

Author: Kapil Bisht

Source: GWFM Research & Study