Social Media for Customer Support: What’s the ROI?
There’s a lot of talk about how social media is going to change the way companies interact with and support their customers and there is evidence that by making this change companies can realize significant value from the community they build. I’ve been wondering about the ROI of such investments and came across a presentation and teleconference that Dr. Natalie L. Petouhoff, a Senior Analyst with Forrester Research, delivered.
The presentation, which appears to be a short summary of an upcoming Forrester research report titled “The ROI Of Online Customer Service Communities”, states boldly at the beginning:
>The #1 customer service initiative for 2009 should be social media
I have to say that Forrester and Dr. Petouhoff definitely seem to get it. She is a long time and well respected analyst in the customer service and customer relationships and I’m encouraged that this report is the beginning of a broader move by large companies towards changing how they interact and engage with customers. Near the end the presentation states that the payback of these efforts, as measured by the Forrester methodology and assumptions, can be less than 12 months.
If that metric holds to be true then companies can hopefully stop worrying about the payback of social media and instead focus internally on the changes they will need to make in their culture and value system to effective use social media to engage with customers. After all, before a company can realize an ROI on their investment they must learn to make effective use of the new medium, which I think will be significantly harder for the majority of organizations out there.
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