Customer loyalty is forged in the cloud

The idea that customers will first seek out a company’s contact centre when they need service is becoming increasingly outdated. These days, customers turn to the internet, where they can easily find experts to answer their questions.

To remain competitive, SMEs need to rapidly adjust to this new environment and face up to the reality that many of their customers are not only online and in the cloud but are talking about their products and services while they are there. Often, instead of calling the vendor company directly, customers will simply access Facebook, comment on their problem and ask for input, or tweet about it to draw on the expertise available in the online community.

So businesses now have to engage with their customers wherever they are and find a solution in real time before issues and concerns escalate. To do this effectively, they need to draw on cloud-based platforms and software that enable them to not only monitor and track the conversations their customers are having but to actively join in with them.

Ideally, such solutions should allow them to have a dashboard view by source of all the discussions their customers are having about them and their products. By using cloud computing solutions capable of connecting with social networking sites, SMEs can build their own communities within Facebook and Twitter, for example.

In turn, this enables SMEs to search by keywords that allow them to identify relevant online discussions or to see spikes in conversation levels that alert them to possible issues. They can then intervene to initiate insightful debate; capture relevant knowledge and harness the innovative potential of the community.

These answers can be voted on by the community, enabling cloud vendors to create “knowledge articles” from the most popular responses, which can be filed within a larger knowledge base accessible to the SME. Firms subsequently benefit by sharing this knowledge across all their channels including their contact centre (if they have one), the self-service community, the public web site and even their business partners.

Using cloud-based platforms also enables SMEs to create customer service portals on their sites, which allow customers to see case histories, search the knowledge base and obtain answers based on service history, and interact with other customers in ideas forums.

Businesses must also be mindful that the first place many customers will turn for answers is search engines such as Google. Using solutions such as the Service Cloud from Salesforce.com, they can make their knowledge base answers accessible through any search engine, so customers who prefer this route can obtain the trusted help they seek.

In the past, the ability to deliver the kinds of approaches outlined above would have been well beyond the reach of most service organisations and particularly SMEs. Indeed, many such businesses would have seen this kind of activity as a potential threat to their reputation and brand.

Now, however, by using cloud-based applications to manage all customer interactions, the situation is reversed; social networking is now perceived as an opportunity by most businesses.

These are just two examples of the practical benefits available to SMEs that are prepared to join the online conversation and get their message across. Driven by new technologies such as cloud computing, the business model for customer engagement is changing fast. If they wish to achieve competitive edge, SMEs need to be aware of this and to take appropriate action.

Steve Garnett is chairman EMEA at Salesforce.com