I just read an interesting post written by Bruce Tempkin. Mr Tempkin has it dead on, we need to stop spending all of our time and energy on how to reduce costs and increasing efficiency. While this is still an important component to managing your call center operations, we need to also be focusing on increasing the lifetime value of our customers.

It is the balance that enables companies to be profitable and continue to grow.

http://bit.ly/bBgwXY

Initial Thoughts on Social Media ROI

Customer care professionals, marketers and PR firms are facing a new challenge. How do you quantify the impact of responding and monitoring social media driven conversations? What is the ROI?

Most in the customer care arena are familiar with a Net Promoter score. Net Promoter score was highlighted and shared in the book by Fred Reichheld, The Ultimate Question. In his book Reichheld shared the concept developed by Satmetrix, Bain & Company that provides companies with a means for measuring customer loyalty which in turn helps to build profitable growth.
Check out http://www.netpromoter.com/netpromoter_community/index.jspa

The main premise is that a company has three main groups of customers,

Promoters - Loyal customers who are vocal in the support of your brand
Passives - Happy customers who like your brand but could be swayed to other brands with the right offer
Detractors - Dissatisified customers who are not afraid to share their perception of your brand

The book goes on to talk about the financial impact to your brand when you calculate the balance of your customers and where they fall into each category. This is your Net Promoter score.

With the increased usage of social media does Net Promoter score become an even bigger factor for a company? What impact does a person with a extremely large social media following have on your brand if they are a promoter or a detractor?

More to come...