Cisco Mines Customer Relations with Social CRM and Analytics
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today added social media and analytics capabilities to its contact center software (see Cisco Adds Social Media to Call Centers).
Cisco says the new SocialMiner software lets companies “find and proactively respond to customers and prospects communicating through public social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, or other public forums or blogging sites.” Status updates, forum posts and blogs from customers can be monitored in real time, letting companies know about conversations related to their brand so they can engage customers who require service.
With more and more conversations taking place in public view on the Internet, “it’s now more critical than ever that businesses are aware of what their customers are saying about them and are able to respond to general inquiries or rectify customer service issues so as to enhance and protect brand reputation,” Cisco said.
Through social media monitoring, queuing and workflow, customer posts on social media networks are organized and delivered to social media customer care teams so companies can respond in real-time through the social network where the issue was first raised.
Ross Daniels, director of marketing for Cisco collaboration, said the social CRM tool can also be used to connect customer service and marketing and find new sales opportunities. “It’s vital for those two groups to be talking to each other,” he told eCRM Guide.
SocialMiner is one of three new features added to Cisco’s Contact Center technology, now called Cisco Customer Collaboration. Cisco Finesse is a Web 2.0 collaboration desktop for customer care representatives that puts the information they need in a single customizable interface, and new rich media capture technology allows for mining of customer conversations for better business intelligence and analytics. The new capture platform supports recording, playback, live streaming and storage of media, including audio and video, with metadata.
Daniels said the rich media capture technology could be used to mine customer contacts in real-time to provide representatives with information and product suggestions to offer customers.
That real-time speech analytics application is just one of many Cisco expects third parties to develop with the rich media capture API. “We’re seeing partners create these unique apps,” Daniels said.
Paul Ferrill has been writing for over 15 years about computers and network technology. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering as well as a MS in Electrical Engineering. He is a regular contributor to the computer trade press. He has a specialization in complex data analysis and storage. He has written hundreds of articles and two books for various outlets over the years. His articles have appeared in Enterprise Apps Today and InfoWorld, Network World, PC Magazine, Forbes, and many other publications.