Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

11

The New Channels of Customer Service

Much of the material in the previous chapter is built on a shifting landscape of increased choice, fragmented media platforms, consumer empowerment, infusion and adoption of technology, and common-sense evolution. This set of new rules comes with an array of new channels (blogging, twitter, search, live chat, crowdsourcing) through which to deploy customer service 2.0 as a bridge to superior customer experience.

On-demand customer management solutions provider RightNow uses the image in Figure 11.1 to show what the expanded contact management solution set looks like for customer service 2.0.

It’s a pretty good summary of how customer service has evolved to become a truly dynamic, organic, and human ecosystem of peer-to-peer conversations (where the word “peer” can mean employee, customer, consumer, or influencer). But if you overlay this (or replace the “social web” node) with the conversation wheel or prism, the number of listening outposts, response mechanisms, or experience platforms skyrockets.

And you need to be there—and by “there,” I mean everywhere.

Many of these new channels exist in the virtual world, what you might call social media or Web 2.0. And social media isn’t just a “new channel,” but arguably the 11 secret herbs and spices that have essentially transformed customer service into an entirely new category altogether.

In this chapter, I’ll walk you through some of these “herbs and spices” in more detail, give you examples, ...