Social chicken and egg
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Ignore social media at your peril, business pundits continue to declare. But now some contrary voices seem to be saying that if you get the traditional stuff right the social stuff will follow.

Almost three quarters of businesses appear not to have integrated social media into their business customer services operations, results from last year’s Genesys Social Media & Customer Services Summit seem to suggest. Although many organisations may have got as far as creating a social media presence, most are still stumped by how to handle customer communication via that channel.

Genesys believes that its own figures are also backed up by findings from contact centre analyst Contact Babel, which suggest that only 16% of organisations currently see social media as a key customer service channel (Genesys announcement reproduced here by Fresh Business Thinking, or contact Richard McCrossan at Genesys – a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent).

By contrast another survey late in 2011, Going Social from global accountancy firm KPMG, found social media moving rapidly up the boardroom agenda and adoption rates around 70% overall. But, with findings based on comment from around 4,000 managers or employees in 10 countries, it too sounded a warning note.

Many of the more developed markets were lagging behind their counterparts in emerging economies, it said. They by contrast seemed to be abandoning inefficient, unreliable – or monitored – email services for the faster and more consistent social network channels.

Since then, KPMG has come up with three key changes that it believes United Kingdom organisations will need to adopt if they are to boost their performance in 2012. Companies will start using games to encourage brand engagement; “laggard” firms will need to acknowledge that only by becoming “authentic” will they be able to appeal to customers tired of corporate spin; and, with increasing calls for corporate transparency, opening themselves up via social networks will become the norm.

So it’s “social media or bust” then? Perhaps not. According to a recent round table debate held by hosting firm UKFast (see VIP Wire coverage), “social vanity” is leading some firms to waste investment in pointless social marketing campaigns.

Why plug your product on social media if people don’t want to talk about it there? demanded one participant. If you just improve the product, a stronger social presence will follow naturally, said another. Social media users have short attention spans said a third – whereas you can’t switch off good old fashioned outdoor advertising.

It’s all interesting stuff. But it begs two questions. First, how would people know to talk about your product if you didn’t plug it on social media? And second (see LiveWire coverage), how much longer are people going to tolerate business on social media at all?

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