A powerful but underutilized alternative
is to locate social customer care in the
operations function, like other customer service
channels. Service operations,
which have often emphasized costly call
centers, are designed to deal with
queries on a scale that has so far eluded
social media, which at many companies
handles 5 percent or less of service
requests. Social-media channels can
work just as well as call centers to up sell
products or capture service-to-sales
opportunities—with some added advantages.
One is that social platforms
make it easier to guide customers to
relevant web pages or video content