With ITEXPO East 2012 just around the corner, it’s time to get frank with key industry players to understand the impact of 2011 and what to anticipate for 2012. To do so, TMC (News - Alert) sat down with Michael Bitter of OIX2, Inc. Bitter shared his insight on the most significant technology advancement in the last year, pointing to the rapid adoption of social technologies by consumers as a viable business communication tool.

The biggest trend in the market segment for OIX2 has been the adoption and use of social media as a customer service tool. As a result of this growth, companies are struggling to support this emerging interaction channel.

When asked how the cloud has impacted his business, Bitter noted that all products offered by OIX2 are cloud-based. As a result, the adoption of cloud-based technologies has helped the company’s cause significantly. He also believes cloud-based communications will expedite the end of the premises-based PBX (News - Alert) market.

As for social media, Bitter’s company has a marketing strategy based on a 30/70 blend of traditional and social media-based marketing. When asked if every business needs social media, the short answer for Bitter is yes – the important element is the overall social media strategy.

Microsoft is now promising tight integration between its mobile and desktop OS, yet Bitter believes Google is giving this once dominate force a run for its money. At ITEXPO (News - Alert) next week, Bitter and his colleagues will be attending the event as panelists/speakers. In doing so, they will provide fact-based responses to questions and invite open sharing.

As for his prediction for 2012, Bitter believes that video interactions will gain in acceptance and will be used as a key tool in customer care interactions. This exciting possibility will also create interesting challenges for organizations along the way.

The entire conversation follows:

What was the most significant technological advancement in the past 12 months and why?

While not driven by technology, per se, I believe the adoption of social technologies by consumers, as a viable business communication tool, has exploded over the past year.  I believe this is a result of an increased adoption of social tools—across all demographics, as well as the result of businesses using social media as a marketing tool. 

From a consumer standpoint, I believe it goes something like this:  “if you are reaching out to me, expecting me to ‘Like’ you or connect with me for marketing purposes, then I expect to be able to make this a two-way street.  I expect to be able to interact with you that way when I have a question or problem.”

What has been the biggest trend in your market segment and how is it impacting your customer

The biggest trend in our market segment has been the adoption and use of social media as a customer service tool.  A recent Forrester (News - Alert) survey on communication channels used by consumers to interact with the companies, with whom they do business, indicated that the use of Twitter, as a means to request information and service has increased from 1 percent to 19 percent over the past two years.  As a percentage of growth, this represents the largest increase across all other channels. We have also seen a growth in the use of Facebook (News - Alert) and M2M being used for the same purpose.

What is the biggest challenge facing your customers today and how is your company helping address that challenge?

As a result of this growth, companies are challenged to support this emerging interaction channel.  Some of the challenges we’ve seen and discussed with our customers include:

• Customer satisfaction/negative brand impact resulting from failure to respond to posts made about them or at them with requests for information, service, or support issues
• Inability to keep up with, or meet response time objectives due to the quickly increasing volume of social media activity
• Increasing costs to handle an increasing volume of social media activity
• Lost revenue opportunities resulting from inability to identify or engage—before the competition does—with customers inquiring about products or services the company or the competition sells—via social media networks, blogs, forums, review sites, etc.
• Risks associated with the inability to control response effectiveness, quality, accuracy, or policy compliance
• Lack of visibility and information related to response volumes, responder productivity, and effectiveness required to adequately staff and manage the social media response related activity

To help companies address these challenges, we developed a cloud based social media response management platform to help companies manage this new interaction channel.  Much like an ACD handles and tracks incoming phone calls, our product helps customer service, technical support, and sales support organizations handle and track social media based interactions.  In essence, we have applied some of the same techniques for managing phone calls and emails to social media.  Specifically, our product:

• Provides a means to “operationalize” the handling of social media response oriented activity
• Brings to social media interactions the same type of intelligent routing, queuing, distribution, productivity, quality management, and workforce management tools traditionally used by contact centers to handle phone calls.
• Makes it possible to safely, reliably, and cost effectively manage, respond to, and engage with an increasing number of consumers who are now using social media based communication to request customer service, technical support, and sales support from the companies they do business with
• Helps contact center operations manage and address challenges related to social media response handling:
• Increasing volumes and handling costs
• Handling priorities – which posts to address and in what order
• Consumer response time expectations
• Avoiding response duplication
• Managing Content/Quality/Accuracy and policy compliance of responses
• Workforce management and responder productivity
• Tracking results and outcomes
• Reducing risk and avoiding the “boomerang effect”
• Improves customer satisfaction/experience (service availability and customer interaction channel choice, response time)
• Improves contact effectiveness (sales conversions, First Contact Resolution (FCR))
• Reduces and controls social media handle costs (lower cost interaction channel, responder productivity)
• Controls response quality, accuracy, and policy compliance
• Makes it possible to identify, respond to, and engage with social media users who raise issues or concerns on social media networks, blogs, forums, and other on line sources that could damage the brand—if left unchecked
• Makes it possible to identify, respond to, engage with, and beat the competition with respect to sales opportunities or leads raised on social media networks, blogs, forums, and other on line sources
• Reduces costs, improves the experience, and improves response time of current social media based initiatives or tools a company may be already using

How has Cloud impacted your business?  How has it impacted your customers?

Our products are all cloud based, so obviously, the adoption of cloud based technologies by business has really helped our cause significantly.  From a customer perspective, cloud based technologies help in several ways:

• They make it fast, easy, and affordable to implement point solutions, so time to market and return on investment is much faster.
• Typically, these solutions are provided on an OPEX vs. CAPEX basis, so it is much easier to acquire than a traditional CAPEX based platform
• Benefits from updates, product improvements, feature additions, etc., can be realized much quicker
• Reduction in operating costs associated with maintaining premise based equipment is lower.
  
  

Will Cloud-based communications expedite the end of the premises-based PBX market?

Without a doubt, yes.

What approach has your business taken to social media?  If you have implemented a social media program, have you been able to evaluate your program’s success?

We are a startup company.  Our marketing strategy is based on a 30/70 blend of traditional and social media based marketing.  As far as evaluation goes, we don’t really have anything to compare it to.  In essence, we’re using number of leads generated with a correlation to social media activity and traditional marketing methods, in conjunction with a cost per lead metric.

Does every business need a social media presence?  Why or why not?

In today’s business climate, the short answer is yes.  Of course, a social media strategy will differ from business to business and industry to industry based on the types of products and demographics of the market served.  I believe it’s a bit like asking if you need a phone presence or not.

There are many reasons, I believe this.  However, the top 3 in my mind are:

• Survey after survey indicates that consumers are using social media and other on line sources as means of making purchase decisions.  You need to be “there” and influencing the “conversation”
• Adoption of social media and on line usage across all demographics.  More and more of your customers a re there and expect you to be.
• Social media has changed the marketing paradigm.  A well designed and executed social media strategy can dramatically increase market reach and reduce marketing costs.
  
  

With Microsoft touting tight integration between its mobile and desktop OS, can it become a major competitor in the enterprise mobile market?

Google is giving them a real run for their money. 

What can attendees expect from your company at ITEXPO?

We are attending this conference only as panelists/speakers during the session, “The Next Step in Social Media Evolution: Social Media Response Management”.  Attendees can expect us to provide fact based responses to questions, an open sharing of what we have learned from conversations we’ve had with our customers and what we’ve learned from being a part of the social media market the past 18 months, and a “soft sell” of our company and products.

Make one technology prediction for 2012 and consider its impact.

I believe that video interactions will gain in acceptance and use as a customer service, technical support, and sales support tool.  This will create some interesting challenges for customer service and contact center organizations as they learn the best ways to deliver and support this functionality, i.e., visual vs. audio and implications associated with that, the types and training of personnel, technology, etc.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell